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THE 



IMPENDING CKISIS 

OF 

THE SOUTH: 

HOW TO MEET IT. 



ENLARGED EDITin 



BY 

HINTON ROWANS' ilELPER 



OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



Countrymen ! I sue for simple justice at your ban K, 

Naught else I ask, nur less will have ; 

Act right, therefore, and yieM my claim, 

Or, by the great God that made all things, 

I'll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hack'd 1 — Shafts 
The liberal deviselh liberal things, 
And by liberal things shall he stand,— Isaiah. 



ONE HUNDRED AND FORTIETH THOUSAND. 

NEW YORK: 

A. B. BURDICK, No. 145 NASSAU STREET 




Enteked according to Act of Congress, in the year 1SG0, by 

HINTON ROWAN HELPER, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 



W. II. Tinson Stereotypes Geo. Russell Ji Co., Printers. 



cassitjs m. clay, 

OF KENTUCKY, 

FEANCIS F. BH.A.IR, Jr., 

OF MISSOURI, 

BENJ^JMI^ST S. HEDRICK, 

OF NORTH CAROLINA, 
AND TO THE 

NOX-SLAVEHOLDING WHITES OF THE SOUTH, GENERALLY, | 

WHETHER AT HOME OR ABROAD, 
THIS WORK IS MOST CORDIALLY DEDICATED 

BY THEIR 

SLNCEEE FRIEND AND FELLOW-CITIZEN, 

THE AUTHOR. 



PKEFACE TO THE FIKST EDITION. 



If my countrymen, particularly my countrymen of the South, still more 
particularly those of them who are Non-slaveholders, shall peruse this work, 
they will learn that no narrow nor partial doctrines of political or social 
economy, no prejudices of early education, have induced me to write it. 
If, in any part of it, I have actually deflected from the tone of true patri- 
otism and nationality, I am unable to perceive the fault. What I have 
committed to paper is but a fair reflex of the honest and long-settled con- 
victions of my heart. 

In writing this book it has been no part of my purpose to cast unmer- 
ited opprobrium upon slaveholders, nor to display any special friendliness or 
sympathy for the blacks. I have considered my subject more particularly 
with reference to its economic aspects as regards the whites — not with 
reference, except in a very slight degree, to its humanitarian or religious 
aspects. To the latter side of the question, Northern writers have already 
done full and timely justice. The genius of the North has also most ably 
and eloquently discussed the subject in the form of novels. New Eng- 
land wives have written the most popular anti-slavery literature of the day. 
Against this I have nothing to say ; it is all well enough for women to 
give the fictions of slavery ; men should give the facts. 

I trust that my friends and fellow-citizens of the South will read this 
book — nay, proud as any Southerner though I am, I entreat, I beg of them 
to do so. And as the work, considered with reference to its author's 
nativity, is a novelty— the South being my birth-place and my home, 
and my ancestry having resided there for more than a century — so I 



VI PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

indulge the hope that its reception by my fellow-Southrons will also be 
novel ; that is to say, that they will receive it, as it is offered, in a reason- 
able and friendly spirit, and that they will read it and reflect upon it as 
an honest and faithful endeavor to treat a subject of vast import without 
rancor or prejudice, by one who naturally comes within the pale of their 
own sympathies. 

An irrepressibly active desire to do something to elevate the South to a 
more honorable and powerful position among the enlightened quarters of the 
globe, has been the great leading principle that has actdated me in the 
preparation of the present volume ; and so well convinced am I that the 
plan which I have proposed is the only really practicable one for achieving 
the desired end, that I earnestly hope to see it prosecuted with energy and 
zeal, until the fair Flag of Freedom shall wave triumphantly alike over 
the valleys of Virginia and the mounds of Mississippi. 

H. R. H. 
June, 1857. 



PREFACE TO THE ENLARGED EDITION. 



In the deep and still increasing interest awakened, within the last threo 
years, in regard to certain views of my own on the subject of Slavery, as 
expressed in the main body of this book, I find ample excuse for making 
some additional remarks, prefatory to the one hundred and fortieth edition, 
which I have the honor herewith to submit to the public, much enlarged, 
and, as I trust, correspondingly improved. As early as the year 1857, 
only about three months after the first edition was issued from the press, 
a gentleman, who resides in Providence Rhode Island, came to New York, 
and through John Bigelow, Esq., associate editor of "The New York 
Evening Tost," made to my publisher and myself overtures for one hun- 
dred thousand copies of a compendium of the work, for gratuitous distri- 
bution. Terms were soon agreed upon, and it is probable that the enter- 
prise would have been consummated within nine weeks from the time of 
its inception, had it not been for the great financial crisis of that year, 
which, under the ruinous policy of miscalled Democracy, began its work 
of prostration within less than ten days after I first received from Mr. 
Bigelow a note requesting me to meet him at his office. Thus unfavora- 
bly affected by the exigencies of the times, the undertaking lapsed into a 
state of almost complete suspension, until March, 1859, when the following 
circular, in all respects explanatory of the objects contemplated in its 
issue, became, as much as any other general news of the day, the property 
of every one who was disposed to read it : 

" New York, March 9lh, 1859. 

"Dear Sir: If you have read and critically examined the work, you 
will probably agree with us, that no course of argument so successfully 
controverting the practice of Slavery in the United States, and enforcing 
a precise and adequate view of its prostrating effects, material and moral, 
has equaled that of the volume entitled ' The Impending Crisis of the 
South : How to Meet it,' by Hinton Rowan Helper, of North Carolina. 

" No other volume now before the public, as we conceive, is, in all re- 
spects, so well calculated to induce in the minds of its readers a decided 
and persistent repugnance to Slavery, and a willingness to cooperate in 



V1H PKEFACE TO THE ENLARGED EDITION. 

the effort to restrain the shameless advances and hurtful influences of that 
pernicious institution. 

"The extensive circulation of a copious compcnd of the work in ques- 
tion, among the intelligent, liberty-loving voters of the country, irrespec- 
tive of party or locality, would, we believe, be productive of most beneficial 
results ; and to this end we trust that you will assist us in carrying out a 
plan we have devised, for the gratuitous distribution of One Hundred 
Thousand copies of such a compend — which, if contracted for and pub- 
lished, will contain about 200 pages, and be bound in pamphlet form. 

" One hundred thousand copies of the contemplated compend, which, on 
about two hundred pages, would contain very nearly all the matter now 
embraced in the regular volume (which sells for one dollar per copy), can 
be had, well printed on good paper, for sixteen cents each — $16,000 in the 
aggregate. This amount we propose to raise in such sums as you and 
other good friends of a good cause feel disposed to subscribe. 

" In all cases, when convenient, contributors to the cause will please 
make their subscriptions in the form of drafts, or certificates of deposit, 
payable to the order of the Hon. Wm. H. Anthon, 16 Exchange Place, New 
York city, our Treasurer and Disburser, who will regularly, through the 
columns of the ' Tribune,' acknowledge receipts of the same. 

" Every person who subscribes Ten Dollars or more, will, if timely 
application be made, be entitled to as many copies of the compend for 
distribution as he may desire, not exceeding the number that the amount 
of his subscription would pay for at net cost. 

" Correspondence or personal interviews in relation to this enterprise, 
may be had with any one of the undersigned, who will be pleased to re- 
ceive subscriptions in aid of its speedy consummation. 

" An early response from you is respectfully solicited. 

Wm. II. Anthon, Treasurer, 16 Exchange Place, New York. 



Samuel E. Skwall, Boston, Mass. 
Sktu Padklford, Providence, R. I. 
Wm. B. Thomas, Philadelphia, Pa. 
Wm. McCaulley, Wilmington, Bel. 



Wm. Gunnison, Baltimore, 3rd. 
Lewis Clephane, Washington, D. C. 
Cassius M. Clay, Whitehall, Kg. 
Frank P. Blair, Jr., St. Louis, Mo. 



"The undersigned having been appointed a Committee in New York, 
to aid in the circulation of Mr. Helper's book, on the plan proposed above, 
beg leave to recommend the object to the public and ask their co iperation. 

"Subscriptions may be sent to the Hon. Wm. II. Anthon, No. 16 Ex- 
change riace, New York, directly, or through either of the undersigned 



PREFACE TO THE ENLARGED EDITION. 



IX 



Charles W. Elliott, 
David Dddlky Field, 
Charles A. PEAisoDr, 
R. II. McCurdy, 
Wm. Curtis Notes, 



COMMITTEE : 

Edgar Ketchum, 
Ai?ram Wakeman, 
James Kelly, 
Benj. F. Manierre, 
James A. Bkiggs. 



"We, the undersigned, members of the ITouse of Representatives of the 
National Congress, do cordially indorse the opinion, and approve the en- 
terprise, set forth in the foregoing circular : 



" Schuyler Colfax, 
Anson Burlingame, 
Owen Lovejoy, 
Amos P. Granger, 
Edwin B. Morgan, 
Galusha A. Grow, 
Joshua R Giddings, 
Edward Wade, 
Calvin C. Chaffee, 
William II. Kelsey, 
William A. Howard, 
Henry Waldron, 

-John Sherman, 
George W. Palmer, 
Daniel W. Gooch, 
Henry L. Dawes, 
Justin S. Morill, 
Israel Washburn©, Jr., 
John A. Bingham, 
William Kellogg, ■ 
Elihu B. Washburne, 
Benjamin Stanton, 
Edward Dodd, 
Cydnor B. Tompkins, 
John Covode, 
Cadw. C. Washburne, 
Samuel G. Andrews, 
Abraham B. Olin, 
Sydney Dean, 
Nathaniel B. Durfee, 
Emory B. Pottle, 
DeWitt C. Leach, 
John F. Potter, 
Timothy Davis, (Mass.) 



John F. Farnsworth, 
Chauncey L. Knapp, 
Reuben E. Fenton, 
Philemon Bliss, 
Mason W. Tappan, 
Charles Case, 
Timothy Davis, (Iowa), 
James Pike, 
Homer E Royce, 
Isaiah D. Clawson, 
Ambrose S. Murray, 
Robert B Hall, 
Valentine B. Horton, 
Freeman II. Morse, 
David Kilgore, . 
William Stewart, 
Samuel R. Curtis, 
John M. Wood, 
John M. Parker, 
Stephen C. Foster, 
Charles J. Gilman, 
Charles B. Hoard, 
John Thompson, 
— * Judson W. Sherman, " 
William D. Brayton, 
James Buffington, 
Orsamus B. Matteson, 
Richard Mott, 
George R. Robbins, 
Ezekiel B. Walton, 
James Wilson, 
Samuel A. Purviance. 
Francis K. Spinner, 
Silas M. Burroughs. 



" Mr. Helper is a native of North Carolina, who, as the result of careful 
observation and extensive inquiry, has reached the very obvious and just 

1* 



»,-» 



X PEEFACE TO THE ENLARGED EDITION. 

conclusion that Human Slavery is the great primary curse and peril of the 
South, impeding its progress in morals, intelligence, industry, and wealth. 
This conclusion, with the facts on which it is founded, is embodied in his 
book, entitled ' The Impending Crisis of the South' — a work everywhere 
received and hailed by the advocates of Tree Labor, as one of the most 
impregnable demonstrations of the justice of their cause, and the vital 
importance of its triumph to our national and general well-being. Were 
every citizen in possession of the facts embodied in this book, we feel con- 
fident that slavery would soon peacefully pass away, while a Republican 
triumph in 1860 would be mAally certain. 

" It is believed that this testimony of a Southern man, born and reared 
under the influence of slavery, will be more generally listened to and 
profoundly heeded, whether in the Slave or in the Free States, than an 
equally able and conclusive work written by a Northern man. And it is 
very desirable, therefore, that a cheap compend of its contents, fitted for 
gratuitous circulation, be now made and generally diffused in those States 
— Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois — which are to decide 
the next Presidential contest. 



" Horace Greeley, 
John Jay, 

Wm. Henry Anthon, 
Thurlow Weed, 
James Kelley, Chairman of 

the State Central Com., 
Wm. C. Bryant, 
Marcus Spring, 



E. Delafield Smith, 
B. S. Hedrick, 
John C. Underwood, 
R. H. McCurdy, 
John A. Kennedy, 
Abram Wakeman, 
Wm. Curtis Notes." 



In connection with garbled extracts from the book itself — garbled by 
the unregenerate propagandists of slavery — the publication of this circular, 
as will long be remembered, created intense excitement throughout the 
entire country, especially in Congress. Sixty-eight members of the lower 
branch of the National Legislature, whose names appear above, had, every 
one of them in his own peculiar hand-writing, indorsed the enterprise ; and 
against all of those gentlemen, in particular, and against many others in 
general — including the author of course — there were at once raised and 
universally promulgated by mismanaged gazettes, charges of treason, in- 
surrection, blood and murder! The Hon. John Sherman, of Ohio, who, 
on the assembling of the present Congress, received from his friends the 



PREFACE TO THE ENLARGED EDITION. XI 

nomination for Speaker of the House of Representatives, found himself at 
once opposed and most wrongfully abused and insulted by the entire pro- 
slavery party, North as well as South, solely on the ground of his having, 
with his signature, approved the long-previously proposed plan for circu- 
lating the book. In the following extract from a resolution introduced by 
the Hon. John B. Clark, one of the representatives from Missouri, may be 
seen the ground-work of the absolute and ungenerous opposition against 
which the Republican nominee for the Speakership, and all his worthy 
colleagues who had signed the circular, had to contend : 

" Resolved .... That no person who has indorsed and recommended 
the book, or the Compend from it, is fit to be Speaker of this House." 

The downright proscription proposed in this resolution was regarded by 
its supporters as but a too graciously moderate penalty, which no one who, 
unfortunately, was so far behind the age as to prefer liberty to slavery, 
should for a moment hesitate to pay. Indeed, one of the chivalric repre- 
sentatives from Virginia is reported as having asserted that, in his opinion, 
every signer of the circular, or indorser of the book, so far from fitness 
for the Speakership, was unfit to live ! Characteristic example of the 
justice and magnanimity of slavery ! Striking instance of pro-slavery 
charity ! Accurate and never-varying illustration of slavery's ill-treatment 
of every one whose manhood restrains him from doing obeisance to the 
black god ! 

After a severe contest of eight weeks, Mr. Sherman, whose friends 
during that period of momentous suspense, adhered to him with a pa- 
triotic devotion worthy of all praise, arose from his seat in the House, and 
withdrew his name as a candidate for the Speakership, whereupon the 
Hon. William Pennington, of New Jersey (a good, staunch Republican, 
who had steadily voted for Mr. Sherman) was at once put in nomination 
foV the office, and duly elected. And so our much-beloved Union, like 
far-distant Uranus, moves on undeviatingly in its course, and will never 
do otherwise. 

A word or two now in regard to the undisguisedly anti-slavery char- 
acter of my book, and I shall then leave the reader to the noiseless mus- 
ings of his own mind. I regard slavery as the essence of all meanness, 
the combination of all evils, the crime of the nation, the curse of the South, 
the entailer of death worse than mortal ; and so regarding the system — 
having long since so regarded it — I am, in all respects, as eager and in- 



XH PREFACE TO THE ENLARGED EDITION. 

exorable for its extirpation from the States as I am for its rejection from 
the Territories. Herein, then, consists the difference, as I understand it, 
between most Northern Republicans, and all true Southern Republicans. 
Under the mistaken idea that the Constitution of the United States sanc- 
tions slavery, Northern Republicans are, in the main, anti-slavery only 
to the extent of keeping slavery out of the Territories ; while Southern 
Republicans — those of them who are so in reality — are not only hostile to 
the extension of slavery into Territories now free, but they are, as is their 
right and duty to be, equally hostile to its perpetuation in the States — all 
the Southern States, in fact — which are now failing and festering and tot- 
tering under its ruinous control. 

And so all the speculations and disputes in regard to what the Compendium 
of the book was to be, amount simply to this : Gentlemen, chiefly at the 
North, but some also at the South, wished me to furnish them, from my 
radically anti-slavery volume ("The Impending Crisis of the South,") a Re- 
publican document that would operate against slavery in the territories only ; 
I, on the other hand, wished to furnish them, and the people at large, a 
Republican document that would operate against slavery everywhere — in 
the States, no less than in the Territories. Parleys and remonstrances 
ensued between us, and, in the salutary destinies of the day, as was right 
and proper, I finally triumphed. The result is that, up to the present time, 
one hundred and thirty-seven thousand copies of the work, in its various 
forms, are already in the hands of readers, teaching, according to my 
conception,' the true doctrine — a doctrine which, if thoroughly investigated 
and rightly understood, will, in time, in the light of both reason and reli- 
gion, impel good men and women, throughout all the world, to the utter 
abhorrence and annihilation of slavery. 

Thus, by faithful adherence to the line of duty, by earnestly combating 
slavery everywhere, especially on the domains of its usurpations and tyran- 
ny, and by refusing to fight slavery only where there is no slavery, have I 
saved myself free from the folly of flailing the wind. And, as I have 
combated slavery heretofore, so will I continue to combat it hereafter. So, 
in the good providence of God, let it ever be combated until, in all the 
broad area of our country, there shall nowhere be left, as a stigma of 
reproach to mankind, an acre or even an inch of ground, or other resting 
place, to afford foothold for either slave or slaveholder, 

H. R. H. 
May, 1860. 



CONTENTS, ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED. 



Adams, John Quincy, 198. 

Addison, Joseph, 367, 382. 

Agassiz, Louis, 17 

Agricultural Products, 37, 52, CO, 61. 

Alexander II. of Russia, 220, 250. 

American Emigrant Aid and Homestead 

Co., 383. 
Andrews, Stephen Pearl, 279. 
Animal Products, 52, 61. 
Animals Slaughtered, Value of, 66. 
Area of the several States and Territories, 

115, 117. 
Aristotle, 223. 
Attorneys-General, 353. 

Bailey, Gamaliel, 303. 

Ba ley, William S., 318. 

Baltimore — Past, Present, and Future, 376. 

Bank Capital of the several States, 335. 

Banks, Nathaniel P., 260. 

Bapst, M., 230. 

Baptist Testimony, 231. 

Barley, 37 

Barlow, Joel, 409. 

Barnes, Albert, 227. 

Bates, Edward, 262. 

Beans and Peas, 33. 

Beattie, James, 213. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 292 

Beeswax and Honey, 61. 

Bellows, Henry W.,"296. 

Benton, Thomas H., 164. 

Berdan, Hiram, 113. 

Bible Testimony, 244-243. 

Bible and Tract Cause, 341. 

Birney, James G., 170. 

Birney, William, 280. 

Blackstone, Sir William, 210. 

Blair, Francis P., Sen., 264. 

Blair, Francis P., Jr., 265. 

Bolivar, 3S2. 

Boiling, Philip A., 16!). 

Book Making in America, 418. 

Booth, Abraham, 235. 

Breckenridge. Robt. J., 271. 

Brisbane, William H., 232. 

Brissot, 204. 

Brougham, Lord, 204. 



Brown, B, Gratz, 2S7. 
Browne, R. K , 360. 
Bryant, William Cullen, 299. 
Buckwheat, 38. 
Buffon. 215. 
Burke, Edmund, 211. 
Burleigh, C. C, 324 
Burleigh, Wm. Henry, 323. 
Burlingame, Anson, 270. 
Burns, Robert, 409 
Bushel— measure Products, 39. 
Butler, Bishop, 230. 
butter and Cheese, 61. 
Byron, 3S2. 

Cameron, Paul C, 47 

Canals and Railroads, Miles of, 835. 

Cane Sugar, 61. 

Carey, Henry C, 28S. 

Cartwright, D \, of New Orleans, 346. 

Catholic Testimony, 233. 

Chandler, Mr., of Vi, ginia, 169. 

Channing, Wm. E , 194. 

Chapin, E. H , 295. 

Chapman, Maria Weston, 310. 

Chase, Henry, and C. H. Sanborn, 433. 

Chase, Salmon P., 253. 

Cheese and Butter, 61. . 

Cheever, George B., 293, 432. 

Child, Lydia Maria, 304. 

Churches, Value of, 340. 

Cicero, 222. 

Cities, nine Free and nine Slave, 371. 

Clarke, Dr. Adam, 235 

Clarke, Judge, of Mississippi, 179. 

Clay, Henry, 163. 

Clav, Cassius M , 249, 254, 346. 

Clay, C C, 55. 

Cleveland, C D., 228. 

Clingman, T. L , 406. 

CI Qton, DeWitt, 2ol. 

Clover and (Jrass Seed, 33. 

Coke, Sir Kdward, 210 

Colonization Movements, 143. 

Commercial Cities — Southern Commerce, 

867-881. 
Comparisons between the North and tho 
South, 17-100. 



XIV 



CONTENTS. 



Conway, M D , 814. 
Corn, Indian, 31. 
Corwin, Thomas, 2S6. 
Cotton, 61. 

Cowper, William, 209. 
Crops per Acre. 64. 
Cm-ran, John Philpot, 211. 
Curtis, Mr., of Virginia, 87. 

Da ien, (Georgia) Resolution, 190. 

Darwin, Dr., 332. 

Davis, Thomas, 32T. 

Deaths in the several States in 1850, 343. 

De bow, J. D B., 33, 48. 

Decrease of Agricultural Products, 72. 

De Tocqueville, Alexis, 215. 

Douglass, Margaret, 3U7. 

Dublin University Magazine, 213. 

Elliott, Chas. W , 322. 
Eme son, Ralph Waldo, 2S4. 
Emigration to Libe ia, 144. 
Emperor of Russia, 220, 250. 
England, Voice of, 205 
Episcopal Testimony, 229. 
Etheridge, Emerson, 136 
Expenditures of the several States, 73. 
Exports and Imports, 334. 

Facts and Arguments by the Wayside, 

3S2-10S. 
Farms, Cash Value of, 66 
Faulkner, Charles James, 86, 138. 
Fee, John G , 315. 

Five Points, Klection at the, in 1856, 134. 
Flax, 60— Flax Seed, 88. 
Fortescue, Sir John, 211. 
Fox, Charles James, 'Ml. 
France, Voice of, 214. 
Franking Privilege, availed of, 431. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 195. 
Free Cities, nine, 871. 
Free Figures and Slave, 332-343. 
Free Labor Movements in the South, 3S7. 
Free \\ hite Agriculturists in the Slave 

States, 343. 
Freedom and Slavery at the Fair, 861. 
Fremont, John Charles, 255. 
Frothingham, O. B , 820. 
Fry, William Henry, 283. 
Furness, Wm. Henry, 325. 

Garden Products, Value of, 83. 

Garrison, Wm Lloyd, 291. 

Gaston, Judge, of North Carolina, 181. 

Gay, Sydney Howard, 275. 

Geo gia, Slavery in, L89. 

Ge many, \ oice of, 217 

Giddings, Joshua R , 2(i7. 

Godwin, Parke, 321. 

Goethe, 217. 

Goodell, William, 298, 132 

Goodloe, Daniel i: . 812- 182. 

Greece, Voire of, ]>■>'■'>. 

Greeley, Horace, 800 

Gregg, William, 4ill. 



Gregory XYI., 233. 
Griffith, Mattie, 306. 
Grimke, Sarah M., 309. 
Grotius, 217 
Grow, Galusha A., 271. 

Hale, John P., 25S.- 

Hamilton, Alexander, 196. 

Hammond, Gov., of South Carolina, 130, 

346. 
Hampden, John, 211. 
Harper Brothers' Establishment, 419. 
Harrington, James, 211. 
Hay, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 60. 
Hedrick, B. S., 313. 
Hemp, 60. 

Henry, Patrick, 148, 158. 
Hildreth, Richard, 318. 
Hill, Rowland, 208. 
Honey and Beeswax, 61. 
Hops, 60. 

Horseley, Bishop, 229. 
How Slavery could be Abolished, 101-147. 
Huddlestone, M. P., 207. 
Hugo, Victor, 216. 
Humboldt, 204, 217. 
Hunt, FVeeman, 373. 
Hurlbut, William Henry, 1S7, 355. 

Illiterate Poor Whites of the South, 344, 394, 

403 
Illiterate White Adults, 338, 433. 
Imports and Exports, 334. 
Ind.an Corn, 37. 

Inhabitants to the Square Mile, 115. 
Inventions, New, Patents issued on, 340. 
Iredell, Judge, of North Carolina, 167. 
Ireland, Voice of, 211. 
Italy, Voice of, 222. 

Janney, Samuel M., 274. 
Jay, John, Chief Justice, 196. 
Jay, John, Esq., 33, 230. 
Jay, William, 198, I ; -'. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 153, 
Johnson, Oliver, 226. 
Johnson, Samuel, Dr., 210. 

Kansas, Aid for, 356. 
Kapp, Frederick, 219. 

Lactantius, 223. 

Lafayette, Gen., 214—0. Lafayette, 214. 

Langenschwarz, Dr. Max, 219. 

Lawrence. Abbott and Amos, 89. 

Eeavitt, Joshua, 297. 

Legislative Acts against Slavery, 3S4. 

Leigh, Mr, of Virginia, 168. 

Leo X.. 223 

Letters from Southern Correspondents, 394. 

Liberia, Emigration to, 144. 

Libraries other than Private, 337. 

Lieber, Francis, 101. 

Lincoln, Abram, 263. 

Live Stock, Value of, 66. 

Locke, John, 206. 



CONTENTS. 



XV 



Long, John Dixon, 317. 
Louis X., 215. 
Lovejoy, Owen, 267. 
Lumpkin, J. II., 4(15. 
Luther, Martin, 21S. 

McDowell, Gov. of Virginia, 1G6. 
McKim, J. Miller, 324. 
McLane, Louis, 171. 
Macaulay, T. Babington, 206. 

Macknight, James, 214. 

Madison, James, 15T. 

Mansfield, Lord, 206. 

Manufactures, products of, 334. 

Maple Sugar, 60. 

Marion, Francis, 1S6. 

Marshall, Chief Justice, 1GG. 

Marshall, Thomas. 106. 

Martin, Luther, 172. 

Martineau, Harriett, 210. 

Maryland, Slavery in, 171. 

Mason, James M.. 178. 

Mason, Col., of Virginia, 165. 

Massachusetts and North Carolina, 20. 

Mattison, Hiram, 236. 

Maury, M. F , 274. 

May, Samuel J., 29S. 

Mayo, A. D., 326. 

Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 

176. 
Methodist Testimony, 235. 
Militia Force of the Several States, 386. 
Miller, Prof . of Glasgow, 214. 
Milton, John, 209. 

Missionary Cause Contributions, 341. 
Monroe, James, 15S. 
Montesquieu, 214. 
Montgomery, James, 332. 
Moore, Mr., of Virginia, 83. 
Morgan, Edwin D., '/01. 
Mortality in the Several States, 343. 
Mott, Lucretia, 310. 

Newspaper and Periodical Statistics, 33S. 

New York and Virginia, IS. 

New York and North Carolina, 362, 363. 

New York Courier and Enquirer, 302. 

New York Herald, 414. 

New York Times, 89, 301. 

New Y'ork Tribune, 414. 

North American and United States Gazette, 

93, 95. 
North Carolina, Slavery in, 173. 
North Carolina and Massachusetts, 20. 
North Carolina and New York, 362, 363. 
Northern Testimony, 191—203. 
Northerners, numbers of, in the Slave 

States, 349. 
Nott, Dr. .1. G, 347, 348. 
Noyes, William Curtis, 276. 

Oats, 37. 

O'Connell, Daniel, 212, 240. 
Odd Fellow Contributions, 342. 
Oglethorpe, Gen., 189. 



Olmsted, Fred. Law, 328. 
Orchard Products, Value of, 33. 

Parker, Theodore, 291. 

Pauloff, M.,221. 

Patents Issued on New Inventions, 340. 

Peas and Beans, :'>s 

Pennsylvania and South Carolina, 22. 

Perry, B. 1'.. 188. 

Pettyjohn, Charles, 3S5. 

Pli ladelphia No th American, 93, 95. 

Philips, Wendell, 2S9. 

Pierpont, John, 244. 

PinkneV, William, 16S. 

Pitt, William, 207. 

Plai o,224. 

Political Power of the Several States, 339. 

Pollok, Robert, 226. 

Polvbius, 224. 

Poor Whites of the South, 344, 394, 403. 

Poor White Laborers, number of, engaged in 
Agricultural and other out-door pursuits 
in the Slave States in 1S50, 343. 

Pope, Alexander, 332. 

Pope Gregory XVI., 238. 

Pope Leo X., 223. 

Popular Vote for President in 1S56, 339. 

Population of the Several States and Terri- 
tories, 116, 117. 

Porteus, Bishop, 230. 

Postmasters General, 352. 

Post-Office Statistics, 336. 

Potatoes, 37. 

Pound-Measure Products, 62. 

Powell, Mr., of Virginia, 88. 

Presbyterian Testimony, 227. 

Presidents of the United States, 350. 

Presidential Elections since 1796, 306. 

Preston, Mr., of Virginia, 170. 

Prettyman, James D., 316. 

Price, Dr , of London, 210. 

Products per Acre, 64. 

Public Documents franked by U. S. Sena- 
tors, 431. 

Public School Statistics, 337. 

Queen Victoria, 207. 

P.ailroads and Canals, miles of, 335. 

Randolph, John of Roanoke, 159. 

Randolph, Thomas M., 160. 

Randolph, Thomas Jefferson, 160. 

Randolph, Peyton, 162. 

Randolph, Edmund, 162. 

Raymond, Henry J., 301. 

Raynal, The Abbe, 240. 

Real and Personal Property, 73. 

Reid, Mr., of Georgia, 190. 

Republican Newspapers in the South, 

390. 
Revenue of the Several States, 73. 
Rice, 61. 

Richmond Enquirer, 80. 
Rives, Mr., of Virginia, 88. 
Rousseau, 215. 
Ruflin, Judge of North Carolina, 179. 



XVI 



CONTENTS. 



Ruffner, Henry, '277. 
Russia, Voice of, 220. 
Rye, 37. 

Sanborn, C. n., and Henry Chase, 483 
Schiller, 217. 

Scl Is, Public, 337. 

Schu z, Carl, 218. 

Scotland, Voice of, 213. 

Scott, Thomas, Commentator,) 230. 

Secretaries of State, 351. 

Secretaries of the Inte ior, 352. 

Secretaries of the Treasury, 853. 

Secretaries of War, 354. 

Secretaries of the Navy, 354. 

Settlement of the Several States, Period of, 

and their admission into the Union, 860. 
Seward, IVm. H.,251. 
Shakspeare, 203. 
Sherman, John, 269. 
Slave Cities, nine, 372. 
Slaveholders, Number of, in the U S 117 
Slaveholders Classified, 117. 
Slaves, Value of, at .$400 per head, 349. 
Slavery, how it might be Abolished, Hll-147 
Slavery Thoughtful-Signs of Contrition, 

8S6. 
Smith, Adam, 367. 
Smith, Gerrit, 266. 
Snodgrass, J. E , 315. 
Socrates, 223. 

South Carolina and Pennsylvania, 22. 
South Carolina, Slavery in, 184. 
Southern Literature, 409-433. 
Southern Testimony against Slavery, 143— 

Southerners, Number of, in the Free States, 

349. 
Speakers of the House of Representatives, 

Spooner, Lysander, 280, 432. 

Spurgeon, Chas. Haddon, 231. 

States, the Several, when First Settled 360 

Statistics, Science of, 82,33, 34. 

Steadman, Mr., of Tennessee, 406 

Stewart, Alvan, 282. 

Stowe, Harriet lieecher, 305. 

Sugar, Cane, 61. 

Sugar, Maple, 60. 

Summers, Mr., of Virginia, 169. 

Sumner, Charles, 256. 



Sunday School Cause, 342. 
Supreme Court, Judges of, 851. 
Swaim, Uenjamin, 131. 

Tappan, Lewis, 297. 

Tarver, M., 130. 

Taylor, J. H.,405. 

Taylor, Wm. C , LL.D., 32. 

Territo ies, the Area and Population of, 117. 

Testimony of the South 141-898. 

Testimony of the North, 1114-203. 

Testimony of the Nations, 204-225. 

Testimony of the Churches 2'JO 243 

Testimony of the Uihle, 244-248. 

Testimony of our Contemporaries 249-331. 

Thome, James A., 409. 

Thompson, Joseph P., 294. 

Tilton, Theodore, 319. 

Tobacco, 60. 

Tonnage of the Several States, 834. 

Tract Cause Contributions, 341. 

Underwood, John C, 311, 390. 

Victoria, Queen, 207. 
Virginia— Bill of Rights, 172. 
Virginia and New Vork, I s . 
Votes cast for President in 1856, 339. 

Wade, Edward, 261. 

Warren, Joseph, 201. 

Wash ngton, George, 150. 

Way land, Francis, 233. 

Wealth of the Several States. 73. 

Wealth Concenti ated in Cities, :I7'-', 'M-'. 

Webb, J. Watson, 302. 

Webster, Daniel, 199. 

Webster, Noah, 200. 

Weed, Thu low, 301. 

Weld, Angelina E., 809. 

Weld, Theodore D.,329. 

Wesley, John, 285. 

Weston, George M , 129-132. 

Wheat, 37. 

Wilberforce, William, 205. 

Wilson, Henry, 257. 

Wirt, William, 167. 

Wise, Henry A., 19,79. 

Wool, 61. 

Worth, Pev. Daniel, 395. 

Wythe, George, 167. 



CHAPTER I. 

COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE EREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 

Comparisons are at the bottom of all philosophy. It is by comparisons that 
we ascertain the difference which exists between things, and it is by compa- 
risons, also, that we ascertain the general features of things, and it is by com- 
parisons that we reach general proposition?. Without comparisons we never 
can generalize. Without comparisons we never could go beyond the know- 
ledge of isolated, disconnected facts. — Agassiz. 

It is not our intention in this chapter to enter into an elabo- 
rate ethnographical essay, to establish peculiarities of differ- 
ence, mental, moral, or physical, in the great family of man. 
Neither is it our design to launch into a philosophical disqui- 
sition on the laws and principles of light and darkness, with 
a view of educing any additional evidence of the fact, that as 
a general rule, the rays of the sun are more fructifying and 
congenial than the shades of night. Nor yet is it our pur- 
pose, by writing a formal treatise on ethics, to draw a broad 
line of distinction between right and wrong, to point out the 
propriety of morality, and its advantages over immorality, 
nor to waste time in pressing a universally admitted truism 
— that virtue is preferable to vice. Self-evident truths require 
no argumentative demonstration. 

What we mean to do is simply this : to take a survey of 
the relative position and importance of the several States of 
this confederacy, from the adoption of the national compact ; 
and when, of two sections of the country starting under the 
same auspices, and with equal natural advantages, Ave find the 

IT 



< 



18 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

one rising to a degree of almost unexampled power and emi- 
nence, and the other sinking into a state of comparative im- 
becilit}* and obscurity, it is our determination to trace out 
the causes which have led to the elevation of the former, and 
the depression of the latter, and to use our most earnest and 
honest endeavors to utterly extirpate whatever opposes the 
progress and prosperity of any portion of the Union. 

This survey we have already made ; we have also instituted 
impartial comparisons between the cardinal sections of the 
country, north, south, east, and west ; and as a true-hearted 
southerner, whose ancestors have resided in North Carolina 
between one and two hundred years, and as one who would 
rather have his native clime excel than be excelled, we feel 
constrained to confess that we are deeply abashed and cha- 
grined at the disclosures of the comparisons thus instituted. 
At the time of the adoption of the Constitution in 17S9, we 
commenced an even race with the North. All things con- 
sidered, if either the North or the South had the advantage, 
it was the latter. In proof of this, let us introduce a few 
statistics, beginning with the States of 

NEW YORK AND VIRGINIA. 

In 1790, when the first census was taken, New York con- 
tained 340,120 inhabitants; at the same time the population 
of Virginia was 748,308, being more than twice the number 
of New York. Just sixty years afterward, as we learn from 
the census of 1850, New York had a population of 3,097,394 ; 
while that of Virginia was only 1,421,661, being less than 
half the number of New York! In 1791, the exports of 
New York amounted to $2,505,465 ; the exports of Virginia 
amounted to S3, 130,865. In 1852, the exports of New York 
amounted to $87,484,456 ; the exports of Virginia, during the 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 19 

same year, amounted to only $2,724,657. In 1790, the im- 
ports of New York and Virginia were about equal ; in 1853, 
the imports of New York amounted to the enormous sum of 
$178,270,999: while those of Virginia, for the same period, 
amounted to the comparatively pitiful aggregate of only 
$399,004. In 1850, the products of manufactures, mining and 
the mechanic arts in New York amounted to $237,597,249; 
those of Virginia amounted to only $29,705,387. At the 
taking of the last census, the value of real and personal pro- 
perty in Virginia, including negroes, was $391,046,438 ; that 
of New York, exclusive of any monetary valuation of human 
beings, was $1,080,309,216. 

In August, 1859, the real and personal estate assessed in 
the city of New York amounted in valuation to $551,923,122, 
showing that New York city alone is worth far more than 
the whole State of Virginia. 

What says one of Virginia's own sous ? He still lives ; 
hear him speak. Says Gov. Wise : 

" It may be painful, but nevertheless, profitable, to recur occasion- 
ally to the history of the past ; to listen to the admonitions of expe- 
rience, and learn lessons of wisdom from the efforts and actions of 
those who have preceded us in the drama of human life. The records 
of former days show that at a period not very remote, Virginia stood 
preeminently the first commercial State in the Union ; when her 
commerce exceeded in amount that of all the New England States 
combined ; when the city of Norfolk owned more than one hundred 
trading ships, and her direct foreign trade exceeded that of the city 
of New York, now the centre of trade *8nd the great emporium of 
North America. At the period of the war of independence, the com- 
merce of Virginia was four times larger than that of New York." 

The cash value of all the farms, farming implements and 
machinery in Virginia, in 1850, was $223,423,315'; the value 
of the same in New York, in the same year, was $576,631,568. 



20 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

In about the same ratio does the value of the agricultural 
products and live stock of New York exceed the value of 
the agricultural products and live stock of Virginia. But we 
will pursue this humiliating comparison no further. With 
feelings mingled with indignation and disgust, we turn from 
the picture, and will now pay our respects to 

MASSACHUSETTS AND NOETH CAROLINA. 

In 1790, Massachusetts contained 378,717 inhabitants; in 
the same year North Carolina contained 393,751 ; in 1850, 
the population of Massachusetts' was 994,$ 14, all freemen, 
while that of North Carolina was only 869,039, of whom 
288,548 were slaves. Massachusetts has an area of only 
7,800 square miles; the area of North Carolina is 50,704 
square miles, which, though less than Virginia, is considerably 
larger than the State of New York. Massachusetts and 
North Carolina each have a harbor, Boston and Beaufort, 
which harbors, with the States that back them, are, by na- 
ture, possessed of about equal capacities' and advantages for 
commercial and manufacturing enterprise. Boston has grown 
to be the second commercial city in the Union; her ships, 
freighted with the useful and unique inventions and manufac- 
tures of her ingenious artisans and mechanics, and bearing 
upon their stalwart arms the majestic flag of our country, 
glide triumphantly through the winds and over the waves of 
every ocean. She has done, and is now doing, great honor 
to herself, her State and the nation, and her name and fame 
arc spoken with reverence in the remotest regions of the 
earth. 

How is it with Beaufort, in North Carolina, whose harbor 
is said to be the safest and most commodious anywhere to be 
found on the Atlantic coast south of the harbor of New 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 21 

York, and but little inferior to even that? Has anybody ever 
heard of her ? Do the masts of her ships ever cast a shadow 
on foreign waters ? Upon what distant or benighted shore 
have her merchants and mariners ever hoisted our national 
ensign, or spread the arts of civilization and peaceful indus- 
try ? What changes worthy of note have taken place in the 
physical features of her superficies since " the evening and 
the morning were the third day ?" But we will make no 
further attempt to draw a comparison between the populous, 
wealthy, and renowned city of Boston, and the obscure, des- 
picable little village of Beaufort, which, notwithstanding 
"the placid bosom of its deep and well-protected harbor," 
has no place in the annals or records of the country, and has 
scarcely ever been heard of fifty miles from home. 

In 1853, the exports of Massachusetts amounted to $16,- 
895,304, and her imports to $41,367,956 ; during the same 
time, and indeed during all the time, from the period of the 
formation of the government up to the year 1853, inclusive, 
the exports and imports of North Carolina were so utterly 
insignificant that we are ashamed to record them. In 1850, 
the products of manufactures, mining and the mechanic arts 
in Massachusetts, amounted to $151,137,145 ; those of North 
Carolina, to only $9,111,245. In 1856, the products of these 
industrial pursuits in Massachusetts had increased to some- 
thing over $288,000,000, a sum more than hcice the value of 
the entire cotton crop of all the Southern States! In 1850, 
the cash value of all the farms, farming implements and ma- 
chinery in Massachusetts, was $112,2S5,931 ; the value of 
the same in North Carolina, in the same year, was only 
$71,823,298. In 1850, the value of all the real and per- 
sonal estate in Massachusetts, without recognizing property 
in man, or setting a monetary price on the head of a single 
citizen, white or black, amounted to $573,342,286 ; the value 



22 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

of the same in North Carolina, including negroes, amounted 
to only $226,800,472. In 1856, the real and personal estate 
assessed in the city of Boston amounted in valuation to 
within a fraction of $250,000,000, showing conclusively that 
so far as dollars and cents are concerned, that single city 
could buy the whole State of North Carolina, and by right 
of purchase, if sanctioned by the Constitution of the United 
States, and by State constitutions, hold her as a province. 
In 1850, there were in Massachusetts 1,861 native white and 
free colored persons over twenty years of age who could not 
read and write ; in the same year, the same class of persons 
in North Carolina numbered 80,063 ; while her 288,548 slaves 
were, by legislative enactments, kept in a state of absolute 
ignorance and unconditional subordination. 

Hoping, however, and believing, that a large majority of 
the most respectable and patriotic citizens of North Carolina 
have resolved, or will soon resolve, with unyielding purpose, 
to cast aside the great obstacle that impedes their progress, 
and bring into action a new policy which will lead them 
from poverty and ignorance to wealth and intellectual great- 
ness, and which will shield them not only from the rebukes 
of their own consciences, but also from the just reproaches 
of the civilized w r orld, we will, for the present, in deference 
to their feelings, forbear the further enumeration of these 
degrading disparities, and turn our attention to 

PENNSYLVANIA AND SOUTH CAROLINA. 

An old gentleman, now residing in Charleston, told us, but 
a short while since, that he had a distinct recollection of the 
time when Charleston imported foreign fabrics for the Phila- 
delphia trade, and when, on a certain occasion, his mother 
went into a store on Market street to select a silk dress for 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 23 

herself, the merchant, unable to please her fancy, persuaded 
her to postpone the selection for a few days, or until the 
arrival of a new stock of superb styles and fashions which he 
had recently purchased in the metropolis of South Carolina. 
This was all very proper. Charleston had a spacious harbor, 
a central position, and a mild climate ; and from priority of 
settlement and business connections, to say nothing of other 
advantages, she enjoyed greater facilities for commercial 
transactions than Philadelphia. She had a right to get cus- 
tom wherever she could find it, and in securing so valuable a 
customer as the Quaker City, she exhibited no small degree 
of laudable enterprise. But why did she not maintain her 
supremacy ? If the answer to this query is not already in 
the reader's mind, it will suggest itself before he peruses the 
whole of this work. For the present, suffice it to say, that 
the cause of her shameful insignificance and decline is essen- 
tially the same that has thrown every other Southern city 
and State in the rear of progress, and rendered them tribu- 
tary, in a commercial and manufacturing point of view, almost 
entirely tributary, to the more sagacious and enterprising 
States and cities of the North. 

A most unfortunate day was that for the Palmetto State, 
and indeed for the whole South, when the course of trade 
was changed, and she found herself the retailer of foreign 
and domestic goods, imported and vended by wholesale 
merchants at the North. Philadelphia ladies no longer look 
to the South for late fashions, and fine silks and satins : no 
Quaker dame now wears drab apparel of Charleston importa- 
tion. Like all other centres of trade in our disreputable part 
of the confederacy, the commercial emporium of South Caro- 
lina is sick and impoverished ; her silver cord has been loosed; 
her golden bowl has been broken ; and her unhappy people, 
without proper or profitable employment, poor in pocket, 



24 COMPAKISONS BETWEEN THE 

and few in number, go mourning or loafing about the streets 
Her annual importations are actually less now than they were 
a century ago, when South Carolina was the second commer- 
cial province on the continent, Virginia being the first. 

In 17G0, as we learn from Benton's "Thirty Fears 1 View," 
the foreign imports into Charleston were §2,662,000 ; in 1855, 
they amounted to only $1,750,000! In 1854, the imports 
into Philadelphia, which, in foreign trade, ranks at present 
but fourth among the commercial cities of the Union, were 
121,963,021. In 1850, the products of manufactures, mining, 
and the mechanic arts, in Pennsylvania, amounted to $155,- 
044,910 ; the products of the same in South Carolina, amounted 
to only $7,063,513. 

As shown by the census report of 1850, which was pre- 
pared under the superintendence of a native of South Caro- 
lina, who certainly will not be suspected of injustice to his 
own section of the country — the Southern States — the cash 
value of all the farms, farming implements, and machinery in 
Pennsylvania, was $422,598,640 ; the value of the same in 
South Carolina, in the same year, was only $86,518,038. 
From a compendium of the same census, we learn that the 
value of all the real and personal property in Pennsylvania, 
actual property, no slaves, amounted to $729,144,998 ; the 
value of the same in South Carolina, including the estimated, 
we were about to say fictitious, value of 384,925 negroes, 
amounted to only $288,257,694. We have not been able to 
obtain the figures necessary to show the exact value of the 
real and personal esta'te in Philadelphia, but the amount is 
estimated to be not less than $300,000,000 ; and as, in 1850, 
there were 408,762 free inhabitants in the single city of 
Philadelphia, against 2S3,544 of the same class in the whole 
State of South Carolina, it is quite evident that the former is 
more powerful than the latter, and far ahead of her in all the 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 25 

elements of genuine and permanent superiority. In Penn- 
sylvania, in 1 850, the annual income of public schools amounted 
to $1,348,249 ; the same in South Carolina, in the same year, 
amounted to only $200,600 ; in the former State there were 
393 libraries other than private, in the latter only 26 ; in 
Pennsylvania 310 newspapers and periodicals were pub- 
lished, circulating 84,898,672 copies annually; in South Caro- 
lina only 46 newspapers and periodicals were published, 
circulating but 7,145,930 copies per annum. 

The incontrovertible facts we have thus far presented are, 
we think, amply sufficient, both in number and magnitude, to 
bring conviction to the mind of every candid reader, that there 
is something wrong, socially, politically and morally wrong, 
in the policy under which the South has so long loitered and 
languished. Else, how is it that the North, under the opera- 
tions of a policy directly the opposite of ours, has surpassed 
us in almost everything great and good, and left us standing 
before the world, an object of merited reprehension and 
derision ? 

For one, we are heartily ashamed of the inexcusable weak- 
ness, inertia and dilapidation everywhere so manifest through- 
out our native section ; but the blame properly attaches 
to a usurping minority of the people, and we are deter- 
mined that it shall rest where it belongs. More on this 
subject, however, after a brief but general survey of the 
inequalities and disparities that exist betAveen those two 
grand divisions of the country, which, without reference to 
the situation that any part of their territory bears to the 
cardinal points, are every day becoming more familiarly 
known by the appropriate appellation of 

THE FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 

It is a fact well known to every intelligent Southerner, 

2 



26 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

that we are compelled to go to the North for almost every 
article of utility and adornment, from matches, shoepegs 
and paintings, up to cotton-mills, steamships and statuary ; 
that we have no foreign trade, no princely merchants, nor 
respectable artists ; that, in comparison with the Free States, 
we contribute nothing to the literature, polite arts and inven- 
tions of the age ; that, for want of profitable employment at 
home, large numbers of our native population find themselves 
necessitated to emigrate to the West, whilst the Free States 
retain not only the larger proportion of those born within 
their own limits, but induce, annually, hundreds of thousands 
of foreigners to settle and remain amongst them ; that almost 
everything produced at the North meets with ready sale, 
while, at the same time, there is no demand, even among 
our own citizens, for the productions of Southern industry ; 
that, owing to the absence of a proper system of business 
among us, the North becomes, in one way or another, the 
proprietor and dispenser of all our floating wealth, and that 
we are dependent on Northern capitalists for the means 
necessary to build our railroads, canals and other public 
improvements ; that if we want to visit a foreign country, 
even though it may lie directly south of us, we find no con- 
venient way of getting there except by taking passage 
through a Northern port; and that nearly all the profits 
arising from the exchange of commodities, from insurance 
and shipping offices, and from the thousand and one indus- 
trial pursuits of the country, accrue to the North, and ore 
there invested in the erection of those magnificent cities and 
stupendous works of art which dazzle the eyes of the South, 
and attest the superiority of free institutions ! 

The North is the Mecca of our merchants, and to il they 
must and do make two pilgrimages per annum — one in the 
spring and one in the fall. All our commercial, mechanical, 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 27 

manufactural, and literary supplies come from there. We 
want Bibles, brooms, buckets and books, and we go to the 
North ; we want pens, ink, paper, wafers and envelopes, and 
we go to the North ; we want shoes, hats, handkerchiefs, um- 
brellas and pocket knives, and we go to the North ; we want 
furniture, crockery, glassware and pianos, and we go to the 
North ; we want toys, primers, school-books, fashionable ap- 
parel, machinery, medicine, tombstones, and a thousand other 
things, and we go to the North for them all. Instead of 
keeping. our money in circulation at home, by patronizing our 
own mechanics, manufacturers, and laborers, we send it all 
away to the North, and there it remains ; it- never falls into 
our hands again. 

In one way or another we are more or less subservient to 
the North every day of our lives. In infancy we are swaddled 
in Northern muslin; in childhood we are humored with 
Northern gewgaws ; in youth we are instructed out of 
Northern books ; at the age of maturity we sow our " wild 
oats " on Northern soil ; in middle-life we exhaust our wealth, 
energies and talents in the dishonorable vocation of entailing 
our dependence on our children and on our children's chil- 
dren, and, to the neglect of our own interests and the inte- 
rests of those around us, in giving aid and succor to every 
department of Northern power ; in the decline of life we 
remedy our eye-sight with Northern spectacles, and support 
our infirmities with Northern canes; in old age we are 
drugged with Northern physic ; and, finally, when we die, 
our inanimate bodies, shrouded in Northern cambric, are 
stretched upon the bier, borne to the grave in a Northern 
carriage, entombed with a Northern spade, and memorized 
with a Northern slab ! 

But it can hardly be necessary to say more in illustration 
of this unmanly and disgraceful dependence, which is so gla- 



28 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

ring that it cannot fail to be apparent to even the most care- 
less and superficial observer. All the world sees, or ought 
to see, that in a commercial, mechanical, manufactural, finan- 
cial, and literary point of view, we are as helpless as babes ; 
that, in comparison with the Free States, our agricultural re- 
sources have been greatly exaggerated, misunderstood and 
mismanaged ; and that, instead of cultivating among ourselves a 
wise policy, of mutual assistance and cooperation with respect 
to individuals, and of self-reliance with respect to the South 
at large, instead of giving countenance and encouragement to 
the industrial enterprises projected among us, and instead of 
building up, aggrandizing and beautifying our own States, 
cities and towns, we have been spending our substance at the 
North, and are daily augmenting and strengthening the very 
power which now has us so completely under its thumb. 

It thus appears, in view of the preceding statistical facts 
and arguments, that the South, at one time the superior of 
the North in almost all the ennobling pursuits and conditions 
of life, has fallen far behind her competitor, and now ranks 
more as the dependency of a mother country than as the 
equal confederate of free and independent States. Following 
the order of our task, the next duty that devolves upon us 
is to trace out the causes which have conspired to bring 
about this important change, and to place on record the rea- 
sons, as we understand them, 

WHY THE NORTH HAS SURPASSED THE SOUTH. 

And now that we have come to the very heart and soul of 
our subject, we feel no disposition to mince matters, but 
mean to speak plainly and to the point, without any equivo- 
cation, mental reservation, or secret evasion, whatever. The 
son of a venerated parent, who, while he lived, was a con- 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 29 

siderate .and merciful slaveholder, a native of the South, born 
and bred in North Carolina, of a family whose home has 
been in the valley of the Yadkin for nearly a century and a 
half, a Southerner by instinct and by all the influences of 
thought, habits and kindred, and with the desire and fixed 
purpose to reside permanency within the limits of the 
South, and with the expectation of dying there also — we feel 
that we have the right to express our opinion, however hum- 
ble or unimportant it may be, on any and every question that 
aflects the public good ; and, so help us God, " sink or swim, 
live or die, suxwive or perish," we are determined to exercise 
that right with manly firmness, and without fear, favor or 
affection. 

And now to the point. In our opinion, an opinion which 
has been formed from data obtained by assiduous researches 
and comparisons, from laborious investigation, logical reason- 
ing, and earnest reflection, the causes which have impeded 
the progress and prosperity of the South, which have dwin- 
dled our commerce and other similar pursuits, into the most 
contemptible insignificance ; sunk a large majority of our 
people in galling poverty and ignorance, rendered a small mi- 
nority conceited and tyrannical, and driven the rest away 
from their homes ; entailed upon us a humiliating dependence 
on the Free States ; disgraced us in the recesses of our own 
souls, and brought us under reproach in the eyes of all civi- 
lized and enlightened nations — may all be traced to one com- 
mon source, and thei;e find solution in the most hateful and 
horrible word, that was ever incorporated into the vocabu- 
lary of human economy — Slavery. 

Reared amid the system of slavery, believing it to be 
wrong both in principle and in practice, and having seen and 
felt its evil influences upon individuals, communities and 
states, we deem it a duty, no less than a privilege, to enter 



I 



30 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

our protest against it, and, as a Southern man, to use all con- 
stitutional means and our most strenuous efforts to overturn 
and abolish it. 

- Our repugnance to slavery springs from no one-sided idea, 
or sickly sentimentality. We have not been hasty in making 
up our mind on the subject; *ve have jumped at no conclu- 
sions ; we have acted with perfect calmness and deliberation ; 
we have carefully considered, and examined the reasons for 
and against the system, and have also taken into account 
the probable consequences of our decision. The more we 
investigate the matter, the deeper becomes the conviction 
that we are right ; and with this to impel and sustain us, we 
pursue our labor with love, with hope, and with constantly 
renewing vigor. 

That we shall encounter opposition we consider as certain ; 
perhaps we may even be subjected to insult and personal vio- 
lence. From the cruel and conceited defenders of slavery we 
could look for nothing less. But we shall shrink from no 
responsibility, and do nothing unbecoming a man ; we know 
how to repel indignity, and if assaidted, shall not fail to make 
the blow recoil upon the aggressor's head. The road we have 
to travel may be a rough one, but no impediment shall cause 
us to falter in our course. The line of our duty is clearly 
defined, and it is our intention to follow it faithfully, or die in 
the attempt. 

But, thanks to heaven, we have no ominous forebodings of 
the result of the contest now pending .between Liberty and 
Slavery in this confederacy. Though neither a prophet nor 
the son of a prophet, our vision is sufficiently penetrative to 
divine the future so far as to be able to see that the " peculiar 
institution " has but a short and, as heretofore, inglorious 
existence before it. Time, the lighter of every wrong, is 
ripening events for the desired consummation of our labors 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 31 

and the fulfillment of our cherished hopes. Each revolving 
year brings nearer the inevitable crisis. The sooner it comes 
the better ; may heaven, through our humble efforts, hasten 
its advent. 

The first and most sacred duty of every Southerner, who 
has the honor and the interest of his country at heart, is to 
declare and prove himself at once an unqualified and uncom- 
promising enemy of human bondage. No conditional or half- 
way declaration will avail ; no mere threatening demonstra- 
tion will succeed. With those who desire to be instrumen- 
tal in bringing about the triumph of Liberty over Slavery, 
there should be neither evasion, vacillation, nor equivocation. 
We should listen to no modifying terms or compromises that 
may be proposed by the proprietors of the unprofitable and 
ungodly system. Nothing short of the complete abolition 
of slavery can save the South from falling into the vortex of 
utter ruin. Too long have we yielded a submissive obedience 
to the tyrannical domination of an inflated oligarchy ; too long- 
have we tolerated their arrogance and self-conceit ; too long 
have we submitted to their unjust and savage exactions. 
Let us now wrest from them the sceptre of power, establish 
liberty and equal rights throughout the land, and henceforth 
and forever guard our legislative halls from the corruptions 
and usurpations of pro-slavery demagogues. 

We have stated, in a cursory manner, the reasons, as we 
understand them, why the North has surpassed the South, 
and have endeavored to show, we think successfully, that the 
highest future welfare of the South can be attained only by 
the speedy abolition of slavery. We will not, however, rest 
the case exclusively on our own arguments, but will again 
appeal to incontrovertible facts and statistics to sustain us in 
our conclusions. But before we do so, we desire to fortify 
ourself against a charge that is too frequently made by care- 



32 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

less and superficial readers. We allude to the objections so 
often urged against the "use of tabular statements and statis- 
tical facts. It is worthy of note, however, that those objec- 
tions never come from thorough scholars or profound thinkers. 
Among the majority of mankind, the science of statistics is 
only beginning to be appreciated ; when well understood, it 
will be recognized as one of the most important branches of 
knowledge, and, as a matter of course, be introduced and 
taught as an indispensable element of practical education in 
all our principal institutions of learning. One of the most 
vigorous and popular transatlantic writers of the day, Win. 
C. Taylor, LL.D., of Dublin, says : 

" The cultivation of statistics must be the source of all future im- 
provement in the science of political economy, because it is to the 
table of the statistician that the economist must look for his facts ; 
and all speculations not founded upon facts, plough they may be ad- 
mired and applauded when first propounded, will, in the end, assur- 
edly be forgotten. Statistical science may almost be regarded as the 
creation of this age. The word statistics was invented in the middle 
of the last century by a German professor,* to express a summary 
view of the physical, moral, and social condition of States ; he justly 
remarked, that a numerical statement of the extent, density of popu- 
lation, imports, exports, revenues, etc., of a country, more perfectly 
explained its social condition than general statements, however gra- 
phic or however accurate. When such statements began to be col- 
lected, and exhibited in a popular form, it was soon discovered that 
the political and economical sciences were likely to gain the position 
of physical sciences ; that is to say, they were about to obtain records 
of observation, which would test the accuracy of recognized prin- 
ciples, and lead to the discovery of new modes of action. But the 
great object of this new science is to lead to the knowledge of human 
nature ; that is, to ascertain the general course of operation of man's 
mental and moral faculties, and to furnish us with a correct standard 

* Achenwall, a native of Elbing, Prussia. Born 1719, died 1792 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 33 

of judgment, by enabling us to determine the average amount of the 
past as a guide to the average probabilities of the future. This science 
is yet in its infancy, but has already produced the most beneficial 
effects. The accuracy of the tables of life have rendered the calcu- 
lations of rates of insurance a matter of much greater certainty than 
they were heretofore ; the system of keeping the public accounts has 
been simplified and improved ; and finally the experimental sciences 
of medicine and political economy, have been fixed on a firmer foun- 
dation than could be anticipated in the last century. Even in private 
life this science is likely to prove of immense advantage, by directing 
attention to the collection and registration of facts, and thus prevent- 
ing the formation of hasty judgments and erroneous conclusions. 

The compiler, or rather the superintendent of the seventh 
United States census, Prof. De Bow, a gentleman of more 
than ordinary industry and practical learning, who, in his 
excellent Review, has, from time to time, displayed much 
commendable zeal in his efforts to develop the industrial 
resources of the Southern and Southwestern States, and who 
is, perhaps, the greatest statistician in the country, says : 

" Statistics are far from being the barren array of figures ingeni- 
ously and laboriously combined into columns and tables, which 
many persons are apt to suppose them. They constitute rather the 
ledger of a nation, in which, like the merchant in his books, the 
citizen can read, at one view, all of the results of a year or of a 
period of years, as compared with other periods, and deduce the 
profit or the loss which has been made, in morals, education, wealth 
or power." 

The present John Jay, of New York (it is hoped that the 
city may never be without a John Jay), in a most ingenious 
and masterly presentation of " The Statistics of American 
Agriculture," recently made in the form of an address before 
the American Geographical and Statistical Society, says : 

2* 



34 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

" In England, the labors of the Statistical Society, whose elaborate 
and most valuable publications enrich our library, through the 
courtesy of the British government, have aroused the attention of 
the people and of Parliament to the truth, that the science of politics 
finds in the statistical element its most solid foundation." 

Impressed with a sense of the propriety of introducing, in 
this as well as in the succeeding chapters of our work, a 
number of tabular statements exhibiting the comparative 
growth and prosperity of the Free and Slave States, we have 
deemed it eminently proper to adduce the testimony of these 
distinguished authors in support of the claims which official 
facts and accurate statistics lay to our consideration. And 
here we may remark, that the statistics which we propose to 
offer, like these already given, have been obtained from 
official sources, and may, therefore, be relied on as correct. 
The object we have in view in making a free use of facts and 
figures, if not already apparent, will soon be understood. It 
is not so much in its moral and religious aspects that Ave 
propose to discuss the question of slavery, as in its social and 
political character and influences. To say nothing of the sin 
and the shame of slavery, Ave believe it is a most expensive 
and unprofitable system ; and if our brethren of the South 
will but throw aside their unfounded prejudices and precon- 
ceiA r ed opinions, and give us a fair and patient hearing, avc 
feel confident that Ave can bring them to the same conclusion. 
Indeed, we believe Ave shall be enabled — not alone by our 
OAvn contributions, but Avith the aid of incontestable facts and 
arguments which Ave shall introduce from other sources — to 
convince all true-hearted, candid and intelligent Southerners, 
Avho may chance to read our book (and Ave hope their name 
may be legion), that slavery, and nothing but slaA T ery, has 
retarded the progress and prosperity of our portion of the 
Union ; depopulated and impoA'erished our cities by forcing 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 35 

the more industrious and enterprising natives of the soil to 
emigrate to the Free States ; brought our domain under a 
sparse and inert population by preventing foreign immigra- 
tion ; made us tributary to the North, and reduced us to the 
humiliating condition of mere provincial subjects in fact, 
though not in name. We believe, moreover, that every 
patriotic Southerner thus convinced will feel it a duty he 
owes to himself, to his country, and to his God, to become 
a thorough, inflexible, practical Abolitionist. So mote it be ! 
Now to our figures. Few persons have an adequate idea 
of the important part the cardinal numbers are now playing 
in the cause of liberty. They are working wonders in the 
South. Intelligent business men, from the Chesapeake to 
the Rio Grande, are beginning to see that slavery, even in a 
mercenary point of view, is impolitic, because it is unprofitable. 
Those unique, mysterious little Arabic sentinels on the watch- 
towers of political economy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, have 
joined forces, allied themselves to the powers of Freedom, 
and are hemming in and combating Slavery with the most 
signal success. If let alone, we have no doubt the digits 
themselves would soon terminate the existence of human 
slavery ; but we do not mean to let them alone ; they must 
not have all the honor of annihilating the monstrous iniquity. 
We want to become an auxiliary in the good work, and 
facilitate it. The liberation of six millions of non-slavehold- 
ing* whites from the second degree of slavery, and of three 
millions of miserable kidnapped negroes from the first degree, 
cannot be accomplished too soon. That it was not accom- 
plished many years ago is our misfortune. It now behooves 
us to take a bold and determined stand in defence of the 
inalienable rights of ourselves and of our fellow men, and to 
avenge the multiplicity of wrongs, social and political, which 
we have suffered at the hands of a most selfish and domi- 



36 COMPAKISONS BETWEEN THE 

neeriiig oligarchy. It is madness to delay. We cannot be 
too hasty in carrying out our designs. Precipitancy in this 
matter is an utter impossibility. Now is the time for action ; 
let us work. 

By taking a sort of inventory of the agricultural products 
of the Free and Slave States in 1850, we now propose to cor- 
rect a most extraordinary and mischievous error into which 
the people of the South have unconsciously fallen. Agricul- 
ture, it is well known, is the sole boast of the South ; and, 
strange to say, many pro- slavery Southerners who, in our lati- 
tude, pass for intelligent men, are so puffed up with the idea 
of our importance in this respect, that they speak of the North 
as a sterile region, unfit for cultivation, and quite dependent 
on the South for the necessaries of fife ! Such gross, rampant 
ignorance deserves no audience. We can prove that the 
North produces greater quantities of breadstuffs than the 
South. Figures shall show the facts. Properly, the South 
has nothing left to boast of; the North has surpassed her in 
everything, and is going further and further ahead of her 
every day. We ask the reader's careful attention to the fol- 
lowing tables, which we have prepared at no little cost of 
time and trouble, and which, when duly considered in connec- 
tion with the foregoing and subsequent portions of our work, 
will, we believe, carry conviction to the mind that the down- 
ward tendency of the South can be arrested only by the abo- 
lition of slavery. 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 



37 



TABLE 1. 
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OF THE FREE STATES— 1850. 



STATES. 


Wheat. 
bushels. 


Oats, 
bushels. 


Indian Corn, 
bushels. 


Potatoes, 
(I. and S.) 
bushels. 


Eye, 

bushels. 


Barley, 
bushels. 




17,228 

41,762 

9,414,575 

6,214,458 

1,530,531 

296,259 

31,211 

4,925,S89 

1S5,653 

1,601,190 

13,121,498 

14,4S7,351 

15,367,691 

49 

535,955 

4,286,131 


1,258,738 

10,087,241 

5,655,014 

1,524,345 

2,181,037 

1,165,146 

2,866,056 

973,3S1 

8,373,063 

26,552,814 

13,472,742 

21,538,156 

215,232 

2,307,734 

3,414,672 


12,236 

1,935,043 

57,646,984 

52,964,363 

8,656,799 

1,750,056 

2,345,490 

5,641,420 

1,573,670 

8,759,704 

17,858,400 

59,078,695 

19,835,214 

539,201 

2,032,396 

1,983,979 


10,292 
2,6S9,S05 
2,672,294 
2,285,048 

2S2,363 
3,436,040 
3,585,3S4 
2,361,074 
4,307,919 
3,715,251 
15,403,997 
5,245,760 
6,032,904 

651,029 
4,951,014 
1,402,956 


600,S93 

83,364 

78,792 

19,916 

102,916 

481,021 

105,871 

183,117 

1,255,57S 

4,148,1S2 

425,81S 

4,805,160 

26,409 

176,233 

t 81,253 


9,712 
19 099 
110J95 




45.4S3 




25,093 




151,731 


Massachusetts 

Michigan, 

New Hampshire, . . 

New York, 


112,385 

75,249 

70,256 

6,492 

3,5S5,059 

354,353 


Pennsylvania, 

Rhode Island, 

Vermont, 


165,5S4 
1S.875 
42,150 

209,692 




72,157,486 96,590,371 


242,613,650 


59,033,130 


12,574,623 


5,002,013 



TABLE 3. 
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OF TIIE SLAVE STATES--1S50, 



STATES. 


Wheat, 
bushels. 


Oats, 
bushels. 


Indian Corn, 
bushels. 


Potatoes, 
(I. find s.) 
bushels. 


Rye, 

bushels. 


Barley, 
bushels. 




294,044 

199,639 

482,511 

1,027 

1,08S,534 

2,142,822 

417 

4,494,630 

187,990 

2,981,652 

2,130,102 

1,066,277 

1,619,336 

41,729 


2,965,696 

656,1 S3 

604,513 

66,586 

3,820,044 

8,201,311 

89,637 

2,242,151 

1,503,283 

5,278,079 

4,052,078 

2,322,155 

7,703,086 

199,017 

10,179,144 


28,754,048 
8,893,939 
3,145,542 
1,996,S09 
30,080,099 
53,672,591 
10,266,373 
10,749,858 
22,446,552 
30,214,537 
27,941,051 
16,271,454 
52,276,223 
6,028,s70 
35,254,319 


5,721,205 

981,981 

305,985 

765,054 

7,213,So7 

2,490,666 

1.524,085 

973,932 

5,003,277 

1,274,511 

5,716,027 

4,473,960 

3,845,560 

1,426,803 

3,130,567 


17,261 

8,047 

8,066 

1,152 

53,750 

415,073 

475 

226,014 

9,606 

44,268 

229,563 

43,790 

89,137 

3,108 

458,980 


8,958 
177 
56 




11,501 




95,848 

745 

223 

9,631 


North Carolina,.. . 
South Carolina,. . . 


2,735 
4,583 
2,737 
4,776 




11,212,616 


25,437 


27,893,426 


49,882,973 


343,992,271 


44,847,420 


1,608,240 


161,907 







38 



COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 



TjSUBLE 3. 

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OF THE FREE STATES— 1850. 



STATES. 


Huckwheat, 
bushels. 


Beans and 
I'eas, bush 


Clover and 

Grass Seeds 

bushels. 


Flaxseed, 
bushels. 


Value of 

Garden 

Products. 


Value of 
Orchard 
Products. 


Iowa, 


229,297 
184,509 
149,740 

52,516 
104,523 
105,S95 
472,917 

65,265 

878,934 

8,183,955 

638,060 

2,193,092 

1,245 

209,819 

79,878 


2,292 
19,090 
82,814 
35,773 
4,475 

205,541 
43,709 
74,254 
70,856 
14,174 

741,546 

60,168 

55,231 

6.S46 

104,649 
20,457 


30,409 
17,807 
30,271 

2,438 
18,311 

6,087 
26,274 

8,900 

91,331 

164,715 

140,501 

178,943 

5,036 
15,696 

5,4S6 


703 

10,787 

36,888 

1,959 

580 

72 

519 

189 

16,525 

57,963 

l^,s-0 

41,728 

989 
1,191 


$75,275 

196,874 

127,494 

72,864 

8,848 

122,387 

600,020 

14,738 

56,810 

475,242 

912,047 

214,004 

6S8,714 

98,298 

16,853 

82,142 


$17,700 
175,118 
446,049 
324,940 

8,484 
842,865 
463,995 
182,650 
248,560 
607,268 
1,761,950 
695,921 
723,8*9 
63,994 
315,255 

4,828 


Massachusetts, . . . 
New Hampshire, . . 

Ohio, 

Pennsylvania, 

Rhode Island, 




8,550,245 


1,542,075 


702,265 


358,923 


$3,714,610 


$6,332,911 



TABLE 4. 
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OF THE SLAVE STATES— 1850. 



STATES. 


Buckwheat, 

bushels. 


Beans and 

Peas, bush. 


Clover and 
i rrass Seeds 

bushels. 


Flaxseed, 
bushels. 


Value of 
Garden 

Products. 


Value of 
Orchard 

Products. 




34S 

175 

8,615 

55 

250 

10,097 

3 

103,671 

1,121 

23,641 

16,704 

2S3 

19,427 

59 

214,89S 


892,701 

285,738 

4,120 

135,359 

1,142,011 

202,574 

161,732 

12,816 

1,072,757 
46,017 

1,584,252 

1,026,900 
369,321 
179,351 
521,579 


6S5 

526 

3.92S 

2 

500 

24,711 

99 

17,778 

617 

4,965 

1,851 

406 

14,214 

10 

53,155 


69 
321 
904 

622 
75,801 

2,440 
20 

13,090 

88,196 
55 

18,904 
26 

52,318 


$84,821 

17,150 

12,714 

8,721 

70,5(10 

803,120 

1 |s,:v.'9 

200,809 

46,250 

99,454 

89,462 

47,286 

97,1*1 

12,854 

188 oi7 


$15,408 

40,141 

46,574 

1,880 

92,776 

106,230 
22 259 

164,051 
50,405 

511,711 
84,848 
85,108 
52,894 
12,505 








North Carolina,.. . 
South Carolina, . . . 








405,847 


7,637,22S 


123,507 


203,384 


$1,377,260 ; $1,855,827 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 39 

RECAPITULATION— FREE STATES. 
Wheat, 72,157,486 bushels, @ $1 50, $108,236,229 



Oats, 96,560,371 

Indian Coin, 242,618,650 

Potatoes (I. & S.), 59,033,130 

Rye, 12,574,623 

Barley, 5,002,013 

Buckwheat, 8,550,246 

Beans and Peas, 1,542,075 

Clover and Grass Seeds, 762,265 

Flax Seeds, 35S.923 

Garden Products, .' 8,714J610 



40, 88,686,148 

60, 145,571,190 

8S, 22,432 589 

1 00, 12,574,623 

90, 4,501,S11 

50, 4,275,122 

1 75, 2,097,631 

3 00, 2,286,795 

1 25, 44S,047 



Orchard Products, 6,332,911 



Total, 499,189,7S1 bushels, valued as above at $351,708,316 

RECAPITULATION— SLAVE STATES. 

"Wheat, 27,S93,426 bushels, @ $1 50, $41,810,139 

Oats, 49,SS2,973 " " 40 19,958,1S9 

Indian Corn, 348,992,271 " " 60, 209,395,362 

Potatoes (I. & S.), 44,847,240 " " 38, 16,042,019 

Rye, 1,608,420 " " 100, 1,608,240 

Barley 161,907 " " 90, 145,716 

Buckwheat, 405,347 " " 50, 202,073 

Beans and Peas, 7,637,22S " " 175, 13,365,149 

Clover and Grass Seeds,.... 123,507 " " 3 00, 370,521 

Flaxseeds, 203,384 " " 125, 254,230 

Garden Products, 1,877,260 

Orchard Products, 1,355,827 



Total, 481,755,703 bushels, valued, as above, at $305,910,325 

TOTAL DIFFERENCE— BUSHEL-MEASURE PRODUCTS. 

Bnsliels. Value. 

Free States, 499,189,781 $351,708,316 

SlaveStates, 481,755,703 305,910,325 

Balance in bushels 17,434,078 $45,797,991 

So much for the boasted agricultural superiority of the 
South ! Mark well the balance in bushels, and the difference 
in value ! Is either in favor of the South ? No ! Are both in 
favor of the North ? Yes! Here we have unquestionable proof 
that of all the bushel-measure products of the nation, the free 
States produce far more than one-half; and it is worthy of par- 
ticular mention, that the excess of Northern products is of the 
most valuable kind. The account shows a balance against the 
South in favor of the North, of seventeen million four hun- 
dred and thirty-four thousand and seventy-eight bushels, and 
a difference in value of forty-five million seven hundred and 
ninety-seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-one dollars. 



40 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

Please bear in mind these facts, for, in order to show posi- 
tively how the Free and Slave States do stand upon the great 
and important subject of rural economy, we intend to take an 
account of all the other products of the soil, of the live-stock 
upon farms, of the animals slaughtered, and, in fact, of every 
item of husbandry of the two sections ; and if, in bringing our 
tabular exercises to a close, we find Slavery gaining upon 
Freedom — a tiling it has never yet been known to do — we 
shall, as a matter of course, see that the above amount is 
transferred to the credit of the side to winch it of right be- 
longs. 

In making up these tables we have two objects in view ; 
the first is to open the eyes of the non-slaveholders of the 
South to the system of deception that has been so long prac- 
tised upon them, and the second is to show slaveholders 
themselves — we have reference only to those who are not too 
perverse, or ignorant, to perceive naked truths — that free 
labor is far more respectable, profitable, and productive, than 
slave labor. In the South, unfortunately, no kind of labor is 
either free or respectable. Every white man who is under 
the necessity of earning his bread, by the sweat of his brow, 
or by manual labor, in any capacity, no matter how unassum- 
ing in dejjortment, or exemplary in morals, is treated as if he 
were a loathsome beast, and shunned with disdain. His soul 
may be the very seat of honor and integrity, yet without 
slaves — himself a slave — he is accounted as nobody, and 
would be deemed intolerably presumptuous, if he dared to 
open his lips, even so wide as to give faint utterance to a 
three-lettered monosyllable, like yea or nay, in the presence 
of an august knight of the whijD and the lash. 

There are few Southerners who will not be astonished at 
the disclosures of these statistical comparisons, between the 
Free and the Slave States. That the astonishment of the more 



I' 

FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. '' 4:1 

intelligent and patriotic non-slaveholders will be mingled with 
indignation, is more than we anticipate. We confess our own 
surprise, aud deep chagrin, at the result of our investigations. 
Until we examined into the matter, we thought and hoped 
that the South was really ahead of the North in at least one 
particular, that of agriculture ; but our thoughts haA r e been 
changed, and our hopes frustrated, for instead of finding our- 
selves the possessors of a single advantage, we behold our 
dear native South stripped of every laurel, and sinking deeper 
and deeper into the depths of poverty and shame ; while, at the 
same time, we see the North, our successful rival, extracting 
and absorbing even the few elements of wealth yet remaining 
among us, and rising higher and higher in the scale of fame, 
fortune, and invulnerable power. Thus our disappointment 
gives way to a feeling of intense mortification, and our soul 
involuntarily, but justly, we believe, cries out for retribution 
against the treacherous slaveholding legislators, who have so 
basely and unpatriotically neglected the interests of their poor 
white constituents and bargained away the rights of posterity. 
Notwithstanding the fact that the white non-slaveholders of 
the South are in the majority, as six to one, they have never 
yet had any uncontrolled part or lot in framing the laws un- 
der which they live. There is no legislation except for the 
benefit of slavery, and slaveholders. As a general rule, poor 
white persons are regarded with less esteem and attention 
than negroes, and though the condition of the latter is 
wretched beyond description, vast numbers of the former are 
infinitely worse off". A cunningly devised mockery of free- 
dom is guaranteed to them, and that is all. To all intents 
and purposes they are disfranchised, and outlawed, and the 
only privilege extended to them, is a shallow and circumscribed 
participation in the political movements that usher slavehold- 
ers into office. 



42 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

We have not breathed away nine and twenty years in the 
South, without becoming acquainted with the demagogical 
manoeuverings of the oligarchy. Their intrigues and tricks 
of legerdemain are as familiar to us as household words ; in 
vain might the world be ransacked for a more precious junto 
of flatterers and cajolers. It is amusing to ignorance, amaz- 
ing to credulity, and insulting to intelligence, to hear them in 
their blustering efforts to mystify and pervert the sacred 
principles of liberty, and turn the curse of slavery into a 
blessing. To the illiterate poor whites — made poor and igno- 
rant by the system of slavery — they hold out the idea that 
slavery is the very bulwark of our liberties, and the founda- 
tion of American independence ! For hours at a tune, day 
after day, will they expatiate upon the inexpressible beauties 
and excellences of tins great, free and independent nation ; 
and finally, with the most extravagant gesticulations and rhe- 
torical flourishes, conclude their nonsensical ravings, by attri- 
buting all the glory and prosperity of the country, from Maine 
to Texas, and from Georgia to California, to the " invaluable 
institutions of the South !" On the part of the intelligent 
listener, who cherishes a high regard for truth and justice, it 
requires no small degree of patience and forbearance to rest 
quietly under the incoherent, truth-murdering declamations 
of these subtle-tongued champions of slavery. 

The lords of the lash are not only absolute masters of the 
blacks, who are bought and sold, and driven about like so 
many cattle, but they are also the oracles and arbiters of all the 
non-slaveholding whites, whose freedom is merely nominal, 
and whose unparalleled illiteracy and degradation is purposely 
and fiendishly perpetuated. Plow little the "poor white 
trash," the great majority of the Southern people, know of 
the real condition of the country, is, indeed, sadly astonishing. 
The truth is, they knoAV nothing of public measures, and little 



FEEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 43 

of private affairs, except what their imperious masters, the 
slave-drivers, condescend to tell, and that is but precious little, 
and even that little, always garbled and one-sided, is never 
told except in public harangues ; for the haughty cavaliers of 
shackles and handcuffs will not degrade themselves by hold- 
ing private converse with those who have neither dimes nor 
hereditaiy rights in human flesh. 

Whenever it pleases, and to the extent it pleases, a slave- 
holder to become communicative, poor whites may hear with 
fear and trembling, but not speak. They must be as mum as 
dumb brutes, and stand in awe of their august superiors, or 
be crushed with stern rebukes, cruel oppressions, or down- 
right violence. If they dare to think for themselves, their 
thoughts must be forever concealed. The exju'ession of any 
sentiment at all conflicting with the gospel of slavery, dooms 
them at once in the community in which they live, and then, 
whether willing or unwilling, they are obliged to become 
heroes, martyrs, or exiles. They may thirst for knowledge, 
but there is no Moses among them to smite it out of the 
rocks of Horeb. The black veil, through whose almost im- 
penetrable meshes light seldom gleams, has long been pendent 
over their eyes, and there, with fiendish jealousy, slaveholding 
ofiicials sedulously guard it. Non-slaveholders are not only 
kept in ignorance of what is transpiring at the North, but 
they are continually misinformed of what is going on even in 
the South. Never were the poorer classes of a people, and 
those classes so largely in the majority, and all inhabiting' the 
same country, so basely duped, so adroitly swindled, or so 
unpardonably outraged. 

It is expected that the stupid and sequacious masses, the 
white victims of slavery, will believe, and, as a general thing, 
they do believe, whatever the slaveholders tell them ; and 
thus it is that they are cajoled into the notion that they are 



44 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

the freest, happiest, and most intelligent people in the world, 
and are taught to look with prejudice and disapprobation upon 
every new principle or progressive movement. Thus it is, 
that the South, woefully inert and inventionless, has lagged 
behind the North, and is now weltering in the cesspool of 
ignorance and degradation. 

We have already intimated that the opinion is prevalent 
throughout the South that the Free States are quite sterile and 
unproductive, and that they are mainly dependent on us for 
breadstuffs and other provisions. So far as the cereals, fruits, 
garden vegetables and esculent roots are concerned, we have, 
in the preceding tables, shown the absolute falsity of this 
opinion ; and we now propose to show that it is equally erro- 
neous in other particulars, and very far from the truth in the 
general reckoning. "We can prove, and we intend to prove, 
from facts in our possession, that the hay crop of the Free 
States is worth considerably more in dollars and cents than 
all the cotton, tobacco, rice, hay and hemp produced in the 
fifteen Slave States. This statement may strike some of our 
readers with amazement, and others may, for the moment, 
regard it as quite incredible ; but it is true, nevertheless, and 
we shall soon proceed to- confirm it. The single Free State of 
New York produces more than three times the quantity of 
hay that is produced iu all the Slave States. Ohio produces 
a larger number of tons than all the Southern and South- 
western States, and so does Pennsylvania. Vermont, little 
and unpretending as she is, does the same thing, with the ex- 
ception of Virginia. Look at the facts as presented in the 
tables, and let your own eyes, physical and intellectual, con- 
firm you iu the truth. 

And yet, forsooth, the slaveholding oligarchy would whip 
us into the belief that agriculture is not one of the leading and 
lucrative pursuits of the Free States, that the soil there is an 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 45 

uninterrupted barren waste, and that our Northern brethren, 
having the advantage in nothing except wealth, population, 
inland and foreign commerce, manufactures, mechanism, inven- 
tions, literature, the arts and sciences, and their concomitant 
branches of profitable industry — miserable objects of charity ! 
— are dependent on us for the necessaries of life. 

Next to Virginia, Maryland is the greatest Southern hay- 
t producing State ; and yet it is the opinion of several of the 
most extensive hay and grain dealers in Baltimore, with whom 
we have conversed on the subject, that the domestic crop is 
scarcely equal to one-third the demand, and that the balance 
required for home consumption, about two-thirds, is chiefly 
brought from New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. 
At this rate, Maryland receives and consumes not less than 
three hundred and fifteen thousand tons of Northern hay every 
year ; and this, as we are informed by the dealers above men- 
tioned, at an average cost to the last purchaser, by the time 
it is stowed in the mow, of at least twenty-five dollars per 
ton ; it would thus appear that this most popular and valuable 
provender, one of the staple commodities of the North, com- 
mands a market in a single Slave State, to the amount of 
seven millions eight hundred and seventy-five thousand dol- 
lars per annum. 

In this same State of Maryland, less than one million dollars' 
worth of cotton finds a market, the whole number of bales 
sold here in 1850 amounting to only twenty-three thousand 
three hundred and twenty-five, valued at seven hundred and 
forty-six thousand four hundred dollars. Briefly, then, and 
in round numbers, we may state the case thus : Maryland 
buys annually seven million dollars' worth of hay from 'the 
North, and one million dollars' worth of cotton from the 
South. Let slaveholders and their fawning defenders read, 
ponder and compare. 



46 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

The exact quantities of Northern hay, rye, and buckwheat 
flour, Irish potatoes, fruits, clover and grass seeds, and other 
products of the soil, received and consumed in all the slave- 
holding States, Ave have no means of ascertaining ; but for all 
practical purposes, we can arrive sufficiently near to the 
amount by inference from the above data, and from what Ave 
see with our eyes and hear AA T ith our ears AA r herever we go. 
Food from the North for man or for beast, or for both, is for 
sale in eA'ery market in the South. > Even in the most insigni- 
ficant little A r illages in the interior of the SLave States, where 
books, newspapers, and other mediums of intelligence are 
comparatively unknown, where the poor Avhites and the 
negroes are alike bowed down in heathenish ignorance and 
barbarism, and AvLere the neAvs is received but once a week, 
and then only in a Northern-built stage-coach, drawn by 
horses in Northern harness, in charge of a driver dressed cap- 
a-pie in Northern habiliments, and Avith a Northern whip in 
his hand — the agricultural products of the North, either crude, 
prepared, pickled or preserved, are eA T er to be found. 

Mortifying as the acknoAvledgment of the fact is to us, it 
is our unbiased opinion — an opinion which Avili, Ave believe, be 
indorsed by every intelligent person Avho goes into a careful 
examination and comparison of all the facts in the case — that 
the profits arising to the North from the sale of provender 
and provisions to the South, are far greater than those arising 
to the South from the sale of cotton, tobacco, and breadstuff's 
to the North. It follows, then, that the agricultural interests 
of the North being not only equal but actually superior to 
those of the South, the hundreds of millions of dollars which 
the commerce and manufactures of the former annually yield, 
is just so much clear and independent gain over the latter. 
It folloAVS, also, from a corresponding train or system of de- 
duction, and with all the foregoing facts in view, that the dif- 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 47 

fereuce between Freedom and Slavery is simply the difference 
between sense and nonsense, wisdom and folly, good and evil, 
right and wrong. 

Any observant American, from whatever point of the com- 
pass he may hail, who will take the trouble to pass through 
the Southern markets, both great and small, as we have done, 
and inquire where this article, that and the other came from, 
will be utterly astonished at the variety and quantity of 
Northern agricultural products kept for sale. And this state 
of things is growing worse and worse every year. Exclusively 
agricultural as the South is in her industrial pursuits, she is 
barely able to support her sparse and degenerate population. 
Her men and her domestic animals, both dwarfed into shabby 
objects of commiseration under the blighting effects of slavery, 
are constantly feeding on the multifarious products of Nor- 
thern soil. And if the whole truth must be told, we may 
here add, that these products, like all other articles- of mer- 
chandise purchased at the North, are generally bought on 
credit, and, in a great number of instances, by far too many, 
never paid for — not, as a general rule, because the purchasers 
are dishonest or unwilling to pay, but because they are im- 
poverished and dej>ressed by the retrogressive and deadening 
operations of slavery, that most unprofitable and pernicious 
institution under which they live. 

To show how well we are sustained in our remarks on hay 
and other special products of the soil, as well as to give cir- 
culation to other facts of equal significance, we quote a single 
passage from an address by Paid C. Cameron, before the 
Agricultural Society of Orange County, North Carolina. This 
production is, in the main, so powerfully conceived, so cor- 
rect and plausible in its statements and conclusions, and so 
well^ calculated, though, perhaps, not intended, to arouse the 
old North State to a sense of her natural greatness and ac- 



48 COMPARISONS BETWEEN" THE 

quired shame, that we could wish to see it published in pam- 
phlet form, and circulated throughout the length and breadth 
of that unfortunate and degraded heritage of slavery. Mr. 

Cameron says : 

" I know not when I have been more humiliated, as a North Caro- 
lina farmer, than when, a few weeks ago, at a railroad depot at the 
very doors of our State capital, I saw wagons drawn by Kentucky 
mules, loading with Northern hay, for the supply not only of the 
town, but to be taken to the country. Such a sight at the capital of 
a State whose population is almost exclusively devoted to agriculture, 
is a most humiliating exhibition. Let us cease to use everything, 
as far as it is practicable, that is not the product of our own soil 
and workshops — not an axe, or a broom, or bucket, from Connecti- 
cut. By every consideration of self-preservation, we are called to 
make better efforts to expel the Northern grocer from the State 
with bis butter, and the Ohio and Kentucky horse, mule and hog 
driver, from our county at least. It is a reproach on us as farmers, 
and no little deduction from our wealth, that we suffer the population 
of our towns and villages to supply themselves with butter from an- 
other Orange County in New York." 

We have promised to prove that the hay crop of the Free 
States is worth considerably more than all the cotton, to- 
bacco, rice, hay and hemp produced in the fifteen Slave Stales. 
The compilers of the last census, as we learn from Prof. De 
Bow, the able and courteous superintendent, in making up 
the hay tables, allowed two thousand two hundred and forty 
pounds to the ton. The price per ton at which we should es- 
timate its value has puzzled us to some extent. Dealers in 
the article at Baltimore think it will average twenty-five dol- 
lars, in their market. Four or five months ago they sold it 
at thirty dollars per ton. At the very time we write, though 
there is less activity in the article than usual, Ave learn, from 
an examination of sundry prices-current and commercial jour- 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 49 

nals, that hay is selling in Savannah at $33 per ton ; in Mo- 
bile and New Orleans at $26 ; in Charleston at $25 ; in Louis- 
ville at $24 ; and in Cincinnati at $23. The average of these 
prices is twenty-six dollars sixteen and two-third cents ; and 
we suppose it would be fair to employ the figures which 
would indicate this amount, the net value of a single ton, in 
calculating the total market value of the entire crop. Were 
we to do this — and, with the foregoing facts in view, we sub- 
mit to intelligent men whether we would not be justifiable in 
doing it — the hay crop of the Free States, 12,690,982 tons, 
in 1850, would amount in valuation to the enormous sum of 
$331,081,695 — more than four times the value of all the cot- 
ton produced in the United States during the same period ! 

But we shall not make the calculation at what we have 
found to be the average value per ton throughout the coun- 
try. "What rate, then, shall be agreed upon as a basis of 
comparison between the value of the hay crop of the North 
and that of the South, and as a means of testing the truth of 
our declaration — that the former exceeds the aggregate value 
of all the cotton, tobacco, rice, hay and hemp produced in 
the fifteen Slave States ? Suppose we take $13 08^ — just half 
the average value — as the multiplier in this arithmetical exer- 
cise. This we can well afford to do ; indeed, we might reduce 
the amount per ton to much less than half the average value, 
and still have a large margin left for triumphant demonstra- 
tion. It is not our purpose, however, to make an overwhelm- 
ing display of the incomparable greatness of the Free States. 

In estimating the value of the various agricultural products 
of the two great sections of the country, we have been 
guided by prices emanating from the Bureau of Agriculture 
in Washington ; and in a catalogue of those prices noAV before 
us, we perceive that the average value of hay throughout the 
nation is supposed to be not more than half a cent per pound 

3 



50 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

— $11 20 per ton — which, as we have seen above, is consider- 
ably less than half the present market value ; — and this, too, 
in the face of the fact that prices generally rule higher than 
they do just now. It will be admitted on all sides, however, 
that the prices fixed upon by the Bureau of Agriculture, taken 
as a whole, are as fair for one section of the country as for 
the other, and that we cannot blamelessly deviate from them 
in one particular without deviating from them in another. 
Eleven dollars and twenty cents ($11 20) per ton shall there- 
fore be the price ; and, notwithstanding these greatly reduced 
figures, we now renew, with an addendum, our declaration 
and promise, that — We can prove, and tee shall now proceed 
to prove, that the annual hay crop of the Free States is xoorth 
considerably more in dollars and cents than all the cotton, 
tobacco, rice, hay, hemp, and cane sugar, annually produced 
in the fifteen Slave States. 

HAY CROP OF THE FREE STATES— 1850. 
12,690,982 tons, @ $11 20, $142,138,998 

SUNDRY PRODUCTS OF THE SLAVE STATES— 1S50. 

Cotton, 2,445,779 bales, @ $32 00, $78,264,928 

Tobacco, 185,023,906 lbs., " 10, 18,502,890 

Rice(rougb), 215,313,497 lbs., " 4, 8,612,539 

Hay, 1,137,784 tons, " 11 20, 12,743,1S0 

Hemp, 34,073tons, "112 00, 3,8S3,376 

Cane Sugar, 237,133,000 lbs , " 7, 16,599,310 

Total, $138,605,723 

RECAPITULATION. 

Hay crop of the Free States, $142,138,998 

Sundry products of the Slave States, 188,605,728 

Balance in favor of the Free States, $3,583,275 

There is the account ; look at it, and let it stand conspicu 
ously forever in attestation of the exalted virtues and surpass 
ing powers of Freedom. Scan it well, Messieurs lords of tho 
lash, and learn from it new lessons of the utter inefficiency, 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 51 

and despicable imbecility of. Slavery. Examine it minutely, 
liberty-loving patriots of the North, and behold in it ad- 
ditional evidences of the beauty, grandeur, and super-excel- 
lence of free institutions. Treasure it up Tin your minds, out- 
raged friends and non-slaveholders of the South, and let the 
recollection of it arouse you to an inflexible determination to 
extirpate the monstrous enemy that stalks abroad in your 
land, and to recover the inalienable rights and liberties, which 
have been filched from you by an unscrupulous oligarchy. 

In deference to truth, decency and good sense, it is to be 
hoped that the enemies of free institutions may never more 
have the effrontery to open their lips in extolling the ag- 
ricultural achievements of slave labor. Especially is it desi- 
rable, that, as a simple act of justice to a grossly deceived 
populace, they may, at once and forever, cease their stale and 
senseless harangues on the importance of cotton. The value 
of cotton to the South, to the North, to the nation, and 
to the world, has been so grossly exaggerated, and so exten- 
sive have been the evils which have resulted in consequence 
of the extraordinary misrepresentations concerning it, that 
we should feel constrained to reproach ourself for remiss- 
ness of duty, if we failed to make an attempt to explode the 
popular error. The figures above show what it is, and what 
it is not. Recur to them, and learn the facts. 

Note. — The announcement of the fact, in all the former editions 
of this work, that the annual hay crop alone of the Free States is, at 
regular market prices, of greater monetary value than the entire cor- 
responding annual cotton and hay crops of all the Slave States, struck 
thousands of persons all over the country with surprise, and many 
of them regarded the statement, and still regard it, as incredible; but, 
from data obtained exclusively from our very enemies, from pro-sla- 
very Democratic sources — aye, from pro-slavery Democratic sources, 
not from Republican, or Abolition sources — proof positive of the fact 



52 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

can be established. In "The United States Democratic Almanac," 
for 18G0, issued by Messrs. Parsons and Chapin, New York, may be 
found, republisbed merely as an item of general interest, the follow- 
ing tabular statement — the last of the kind, perhaps — put forth as 
long ago as 1855, from the (also pro-slavery Democratic) Agricultural 
department of the Patent Office in Washington : 

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OP THE UNITED STATES IN 1855. 

According to the data from the Agricultural Department of the Patent Office, the fol- 
lowing table shows nearly the amount and value of the Agricultural and Animal pro- 
ducts of the country for 1855 : 

Indian Corn, 600,000,000 bush., (d $0 60, $360,300,000 

Wheat, 105,000,000 " " 150, 247,500,000 

Rye, 14,000,000 " " 100, 14,000,000 

Barley, 6,600,000 " " 90, 5,940,000 

Oats, 170,000,000 " " 40, 68,000,000 

Buckwheat, 10,000,000 " " 50, 5,000,000 

Potatoes, all sorts, 110,000,000 " " 37$, 41,250,000 

Flaxseed, 58,000 " " 125, 72,500 

Deans and Peas, 9,500,000 " " 2 00, 19,000,000 

Clover and Grass Seed, 1,000,000 " " 8 00, 8,000,000 

Rice, 250,000,000 lbs., " 4, 10,000,000 

Sugar, cane, 505,000,000 " " 7, 35.350,000 

Sugar, maple, 34,000,000 " " 8, 2,720,000 

Molasses, 14,000,000 gals., " 80, 4,200,000 

Wine, 2,500,000 " " 100, .... 2,500,000 

Hops, 3,500,000 lbs., " 15, 525,000 

Orchard Products, 25,000,000 

Garden Products, 50,000,000 

Tobacco, 190,000,000 lbs., " 10, 19,000,000 

Cotton, 1,700,000,000 " " 8, 136.000,000 

Hemp, 84,500 tons, " 100 00, 3,450,000 

Flax, 800,000 lbs., " 10, 80,000 

Hay and Fodder, 16,000,000 tons, " 10 00, 100.umo.uuo 

Pasturage, 148,000,000 

DOMESTIC ANIMALS AND ANIMAL PRODUCTS. 

Horned Cattle, 21,000,000 @ $20 00, 1420,000,000 

Horses, Asses, and Mules, 5,100,000 " 60 00, 806,600,000 

Sheep, 23,500,000 " 2 00, 47,000,000 

Swine, 82,000,000 " 5 00, 160,000,000 

Poultry, 20,000,000 

Slaughtered animals, 200,000,000 

Butter and Cheese, 500,000,000 lbs., " 15, 75,000,000 

Milk, exclusive of that used 

for butter and cheese,.... 1,000,000,000 gals., " 10, 100,000,000 

Wool, 60,000,000 lbs., " 85, 21,000,000 

Beeswax and Honey, 16,000,000 " " 15, 2,400,000 

Silk cocoons, 5,000 " " 100, 5,000 

Grand total $2,707,892,000 

From an examination of the respective items above, it will be 
seen that, while the total market value of cotton, for the year men- 
tioned, was only $136,000,000, the like value of hay and fodder, for 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 53 

the same year, amounted to $100,000,000, showing a balance of 
$24,000,000 in favor of the latter. Now, if the 'fodder,' of which 
our pro-slavery statisticians speak, be stacked separately from the 
hay, as we may easily learn how to do by referring to the official re- 
ports of the seventh census, we shall have before us the weight and 
worth of each article by itself, substantially corroborating, in every 
particular, all the foregoing and subsequent statements in these pages 
on the subject. 

So hyperbolically has the importance of cotton been mag- 
nified by certain pro-slavery politicians of the South, that the 
person who would give credence to all their fustian and 
bombast, would be under the necessity of believing that the 
very existence of almost everything, in the heaven above, in 
the earth beneath, and in the water under the earth, depended 
on it. The truth is, however, that the cotton crop is of but 
comparatively little value to the South. New England and 
Old England, by their superior enterprise and sagacity, turn 
it chiefly to their own advantage. It is carried in their ships, 
spun in their factories, woven in their looms, insured in their 
offices, returned again in their own vessels, and, with double 
freight and cost of manufacturing added, purchased by the 
South at a high premium. Of all the parties engaged or 
interested in its transportation and manufacture, the 
South is the only one that does not make a profit. Nor 
does she, as a general thing, make a decent profit by produc- 
ing it. 

We are credibly informed that many of the farmers in the 
immediate vicinity of Baltimore, where we now write, have 
turned their attention exclusively to hay, and that from one 
acre they frequently gather two tons, for which they receive 
fifty dollars. Let us now inquire how many dollars may be 
expected from an acre planted in cotton. Mr. Cameron, from 
whose able address before the Agricultural Society of Orange 



54: COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

County, North Carolina, we have already gleaned some inte- 
resting particulars, informs us, that the cotton planters in his 
part of the country, " have contented themselves with a crop 
yielding only ten or twelve dollars per acre," and that " the 
summing up of a large surface gives but a living result." An 
intelligent resident of the Palmetto State, writing in De Bow's 
Review, not long since, advances the opinion that the cotton 
planters of South Carolina are not realizing more than one per 
cent, on the amount of capital they have invested. While in 
Virginia, very recently, an elderly slaveholder, whose reli- 
gious walk and conversation had recommended and promoted 
him to an eldership in the Presbyterian church, and who 
supports himself and family by raising negroes and tobacco, 
told us that, for the last eight or ten years, aside from the 
increase of his human chattels, he felt quite confident he had 
not cleared as much even as one per cent, per annum on the 
amount of his investment. The real and personal property 
of this aged Christian consists chiefly hi a large tract of 
land and about thirty negroes, most of whom, according to 
his own confession, are more expensive than profitable. The 
proceeds arising from the sale of the tobacco they produce, 
are all absorbed in the purchase of meat and bread for home 
consumption, and when the crop is stunted by drought, frost, 
or otherwise cut short, one of the negroes must be sold to 
raise funds for the support of the others. Such are the 
agricultural achievements of slave labor; such are the results of 
" the sum of all villainies." The diabolical institution subsists 
on its own flesh. At one time children are sold to procure 
food for the parents, at another, parents are sold to procure 
food for the children. Within its pestilential atmosphere, 
nothing succeeds; progress and prosperity are unknown; 
inanition and slothfulness ensue ; everything becomes dull, 
dismal and unprofitable ; wretchedness and desolation stand 



FREE AND TEIE SLAVE STATES. 55 

or lie in bold relief throughout the laud ; an aspect of most 
melancholy inactivity and dilapidation broods over every city 
and town ; ignorance and prejudice sit enthroned over the 
minds of the people ; usurping despots wield the sceptre of 
power; everywhere, and in everything, between Delaware 
Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, are the multitudinous evils of 
slavery apparent. 

The soil itself soon sickens and dies beneath the unnatural 
tread of the slave. Hear what the Hon. C. C. Clay, of Ala- 
bama, has to say upon the subject. His testimony is emi- 
nently suggestive, well-timed, and truthful ; and we heartily 
commend it to the careful consideration of every spirited 
Southron who loves his country, and desires to see it rescued 
from the fatal grasp of " the mother of harlots." Says he : 

" I can show you, with sorrow, in the older portions of Alahama, 
and in my native county of Madison, the sad memorials of the art- 
less and exhausting culture of cotton. Our small planters, after 
taking the cream off their lands, unable to restore them by rest, 
manures, or otherwise, are going further "West and South, in search 
of other virgin lands, which they may and will despoil and impove- 
rish in like manner. Our wealthier planters, with greater means 
and no more skill, are buying out their poorer neighbors, extending 
their plantations, and adding to their slave force. The wealthy few, 
who are able to live on smaller profits, and to give their blasted 
fields some rest, are thus pushing off the many who are merely inde- 
pendent. Of the $20,000,000 annually realized from the sales of the 
cotton crop of Alabama, nearly all not expended in supporting the 
producers, is re-invested in land and negroes. Thus the white popu- 
lation has decreased and the slave increased almost pari passu in 
several counties of our State. In 1825, Madison County cast about 
3,000 votes ; now, she cannot cast exceeding 2,300. In traversing 
that county, one will discover numerous farm-houses, once the abode 
of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied by slaves, or 
tenantless, deserted and dilapidated ; he will observe fields, once 



56 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

fertile, now unfenced, abandoned and covered with those evil har- 
bingers, fox-tail and broomsedge ; he will see the moss growing on 
the moldering walls of once thrifty villages, and will find ' one only 
master grasps the whole domain,' that once furnished happy homes 
for a dozen white families. Indeed, a country in its infancy, where 
fifty years ago scarce a forest tree had been felled by the axe of the 
pioneer, is already exhibiting the painful signs of senility and decay, 
apparent in Virginia and the Carolinas." 

Some one has said that " an honest confession is good for 
the soul," and if the adage be true, as we have no doubt it is, 
we think Mr. C. C. Clay is entitled to a quiet conscience on 
one score at least. In the extract quoted above, he gives us 
a graphic description of the ruinous operations and influences 
of Slavery in the Southwest ; and we, as a native of Carolina, 
and a traveller through Virginia, are ready to bear testimony 
to the fitness of his remarks when he referred to those States 
as examples of senility and decay. With equal propriety, 
however, he might have stopped nearer home for a subject of 
comparison. Either of the States bordering upon Alabama, 
or, indeed, any other slave States, would have answered his 
purpose quite as well as Virginia and the Carolinas. Where- 
ever slavery exists there he may find parallels to the destruc- 
tion that is sweeping with such deadly influence over his own 
unfortunate State. 

As for examples of vigorous, industrious and thrifty com- 
munities, they can be found anywhere beyond the Upas- 
shadow of slavery — nowhere else. ~New York and Massa- 
chusetts, which, by nature, are confessedly far inferior to 
Virginia and the Carolinas, have, by the more liberal and 
equitable policy which they have pursued, in substituting 
liberty for slavery, attained a degree of eminence and pros- 
perity altogether unknown in the slave States. 

Amidst all the hyperbole and cajolery of pro-slavery poli- 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 57 

ticians who, as we have already seen, are " the books, the 
arts, the academies, that show, contain and govern all the 
South," we are rejoiced to see that Mr. Clay, Mr. Cameron, 
and a few others, have had the boldness and honesty to step 
forward and proclaim the truth. All such frank admissions 
are to be hailed as good omens for the South. Nothing good 
can come from any attempt to conceal the unconcealable 
evidences of poverty and desolation everywhere trailing in 
the wake of slavery. Let the truth be told on all occasions, 
of the North as well as of the South, and the people will 
soon begin to discover the egregiousness of their errors, to 
draw just comparisons, to inquire into cause and effect, and 
to adopt the more utile measures, manners and customs of 
their wiser contemporaries. 

In willfully traducing and decrying everything North of 
Mason and Dixon's line, and in excessively magnifying the 
importance of everything South of it, the oligarchy have, in 
the eyes of all liberal and intelligent men, only made an 
exhibition of their uncommon folly and dishonesty. For a 
long time, it is true, they have succeeded in deceiving the 
people, in keeping them humbled in the murky sloughs of 
poverty and ignorance, and in instilling into their untutored 
minds, passions and prejudices expressly calculated to 
strengthen and protect the accursed system of slavery ; but, 
thanks to heaven, their inglorious reign is fast drawing to a 
close ; with irresistible brilliancy, and in spite of the interdict 
of tyrants, light from the pure fountain of knowledge is now 
streaming over the dark places of our land, and, ere long — 
mark our words — there will ascend from Delaware, and from 
Texas, and from all the intermediate States, a huzza for 
Freedom and for Equal Rights, that will utterly confound 
the friends of despotism, set at defiance the authority of 

3* 



58 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

usurpers, and carry consternation to the heart of every 
slavery-propagandist. 

To undeceive the people of the South, to bring them to a 
knowledge of the inferior and disreputable position which 
they occupy as a component part of the Union, and to give 
prominence and popularity to those plans which, if adopted, 
will elevate us to an equality, socially, morally, intellectually, 
industrially, politically, and financially, with the most flourish- 
ing and refined nation in the world, and, if possible, to place 
us in the van of even that, is the object of this work. Slave- 
holders, either from ignorance or from a willful disposition to 
propagate error, contend that the South has nothing to be 
ashamed of, that slavery has proved a blessing to her, and 
that her superiority over the North, in an agricultural point 
of view, makes amends for all her short-comings in other 
respects. On the other hand, we contend that many years of 
continual blushing and severe penance would not suffice to 
cancel or annul the shame and disgrace that justly attaches to " 
the South in consequence of slavery — the direst evil that e'er 
befell the land — that the South bears nothing like even a re- 
spectable approximation to the North in navigation, com- 
merce, or manufactures, and that, contrary to the opinion en- 
tertained by ninety-nine hundredths of her people, she is far 
behind the free States in the only thing of which she has ever 
dared to boast — agriculture. We submit the question to the 
arbitration of figures, which, it is said, do not lie. With 
regard to the bushel-measure products of the soil, of which 
Ave have already taken an inventory, we have seen that thero 
is a balance against the South in favor of the North of seven- 
teen million four hundred and thirty-four thousand and 
seventy-eight bushels, and a difference in the value of the same, 
also in favor of the North, of forty-five million seven hundred 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 59 

and ninety-seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-one dol- 
lars. It is certainly a most novel kind of agricultural supe- 
riority that the South claims on that score ! 

Our attention shall now be directed to the twelve principal 
pound-measure products of the Free and of the Slave States — 
hay, cotton, butter and cheese, tobacco, cane-sugar, wool, rice, 
hemp, maple sugar, beeswax and honey, flax, and hops — and 
in taking an account of them, we shall, in order to show the 
exact quantity produced in each State, and for the conveni- 
ence, of future reference, pursue the same plan as that adopted 
in the preceding tables. Whether slavery will appear to bet- 
ter advantage on the scales than it did in the half-bushel, 
remains to be seen. It is possible that the rickety old mon- 
ster may make a better show on a new track • but if it makes 
a more ridiculous display, we shall not be surprised. A care- 
ful examination of its precedents, has taught us the folly of 
expecting anything good to issue from it in any manner what- 
ever. It has no disposition to emulate the magnanimity of 
its betters, and as for a laudable ambition to excel, that is a 
characteristic altogether foreign to its nature. Languor and 
inertia are the insanitary viands upon which it delights to 
satiate its morbid appetite ; and " from bad to worse " is the 
ill-omened motto under which, in all its feeble efforts and 
achievements, it ekes out a most miserable and deleterious 
existence. 



60 



COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 



TABLE 5. 
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OP THE PREE STATES— 1850. 



Hay, tons. 



Hemp, 
tons. 



Hops, lbs. 



Flax, lbs. 



Maple Sugar, 
lbs. 



Tobacco, 
lbs. 



California,. - . 

Connecticut 

Illinois, 

Indiana, 

Iowa, 

Maine, 

Massachusetts,.. . 

Michigan, 

New Hampsliire, 

New Jersey, 

New York, 

Ohio, _ .... 

Pennsylvania, . . 
Rhode Island, . . . 

Vermont, 

Wisconsin, 



2,038 

616,131 

601,952 

403,230 

89,055 

755,889 

651,807 

404,934 

598,854 

435,950 

3,728,797 

1,443,142 

1,842,970 

74,418 

866,153 

275,662 



4 

150 
44 



554 

3,551 

92,796 

8,242 

40,120 

121,595 

10,663 

257,174 

2,133 

2,536,299 

63,731 

22,0S8 

277 

• 288,023 

15,930 



17,928 

160,063 

5S4.469 

62,660 

17,081 

1,162 

7,152 

7,652 

182,965 

940,577 

446,1132 

530,307 

85 

20,852 



50,796 

248,904 

2,921,192 

7S,407 

93,542 

795,525 

2,439,794 

1,29S,863 

2,197 

10,357,484 

4,58S,209 

2,326,525 

28 

6,349,357 

610,976 



1,000 

1,267,624 

841,394 

1,044,620 

6,041 

13S,246 

1,245 

60 

310 

83,1S9 

10,454,449 

912,651 



1,268 



12,690,9S2 198 



3,463,176 



3,048,278 32,161,799 14,752,0S7 



TABLE 6. 

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OP THE SLAVE STATES— 1850. 



Alabama, 

Arkansas, 

Delaware, 

Florida, 

Georgia, 

Kentucky, 

Louisiana, 

Maryland, 

Mississippi, 

Missouri, 

North Carolina, 
South Carolina,. 
Tennessee, 

Texas, 

Virginia, 



Hay, tons. 



82. 
3. 

80, 
% 

23. 
113 

25 
157 

12 
110 
145 

20 

74 

8 

889 



(or. 
9T6 
159 
510 
149 
TIT 
752 
km; 
504 
,925 
653 
.;>-':. 
,091 
,854 
,098 



1,187,784 84,678 



Hemp, 
tons. 



15 



17,787 



63 

7 

16.028 



595 
'i39 



Hops, lbs. 



276 

157 

848 

14 

261 

4,309 

125 

1,870 

473 

4,130 

9,246 

26 

1,032 

7 

11,506 



33,780 



Flax, lbs. 



3,921 

12,291 

17,174 

50 

5,3S7 

2,100,116 

' 85,686 

665 
627,160 
593,796 

833 

36S,131 

1,048 

1,000,450 



4,766,208 



Maple Sugar, 
lbs. 



643 
9,330 



50 

487,405 

255 

47,740 

' 178,910 

27,932 

200 

158,557 

1,227,665 



Tobacco, 
lbs. 



164,990 
218,936 

998,614 

423,924 

55,501,196 

26,878 

21,407,497 
49,960 

17,113,7S4 

11,984,786 
74,2S5 

20,148,982 
66,897 

56,803,227 



2,088,6S7 1S4,9S3,906 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 



61 



TABLE 6 Continued. 

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OP THE SLAVE STATES— 1850. 



Cotton, 
bales of 400 lbs. 



Cane Sugar, 
bhds. of 1,001) lbs. 



Rough Rice, 
lbs. 



Alabama, 

Arkansas, 

Delaware, 

Florida, 

Georgia, 

Kentucky, 

Louisiana, .... 
Maryland, .... 

Mississippi, 

Missouri, 

North Carolina, 
South Carolina, 

Tennessee 

Texas, 

Virginia, 



564,429 
65,344 

45,131 
499,091 

75S 
178,731 

4S4.292 

50,545 
300,901 
194,532 

58,072 
3,947 



2,445,779 



2,750 



10 
220,001 



77 

3 

7,351 



237,133 



2,312,252 
63,179 

1,075,090 

3S,950,691 

5,6S8 

4,425,349 

2,719,856 

700 

5,465,S68 

159,930,613 

25S.S54 
88,203 
17,154 



215,313,497 



TABLE 7. 
ANIMAL PRODUCTS OP THE FREE AND OP THE SLAVE STATES— 1860. 



ANIMAL PRODUCTS OP THE FREE 


ANIMAL PRODUCTS OF THE SLAVE 




STATES — 1850. 




STATES — 1850. 






Bntter 


Beeswax 


| 




Butter 


Beeswax 




Wool, 








Wool, 


and 


and 




lbs. 


Cheese, 


Honev, 




lbs. 


Cheese, 


Honey, 






lbs. lbs. 






lbs. 


lbs. 


California, . . . 


5,520 


855 




Alabama,. . . 


657,118 


4,040,223 


897,021 


Connecticut, . 


497,454 


11,861,396 


93,304 


Arkansas, . . 


182,595 1,884,327 


192,838 




2,150,113 


13,804,768 


869,444 


Delaware,.. . 


57,768 1,058,495 


41,248 




2,610,287 


13,506,099 


935,329 


Florida, 


23,2471 389,513 


18,971 




373,898 


2,381,028 


321,711 


Georgia, 


990,019 4,687,535 


732,514 


Maine, 


1,364,03-1 


11,678,265 


189,618 


Kentucky,.. 


2,297,43310,161,477 


1,158,019 




585,136 


15,159,512 


59,50S 


Louisiana, . . 


109,8971 685,026 


96,701 


Michigan, . . . 


2,043,28J 


8,077,390 


359,232 


Maryland, . . 


477,438 3,810,135 


T4,802 


N. Hampshire 


1,108,476! 10,173,619 


117,140 


Mississippi,.. 


559,619, 4,367,425 897,400 


New Jersey,.. 


375,396 9,S52,966 156,694 


Missouri, ... 


1,627,164 8,037,931 1,828,9X2 


New York,. . . 


10,071,301129,507,5071,755,830 


N. Carolina, 


970,738 4,242,211 512,289 


Ohio, 


10,196,371 55,268,921, 804,275 


S. Carolina, 


487,233 2,986,820 216,281 


Pennsylvania 


4,481,570 42,383,452: 839,509 


Tennessee,.. 


1,364,378 8,317,200 1,036,572 


Rhode Island, 


129,692 1,312,178! 6,347 


Texas, 


131,917 2,440,199 


380,820 


Vermont, 


3,400,717) 20,85S,S14: 249,422 


Virginia, . . . 


2,860,765 11,525,651 


880,767 


■Wisconsin, .. 


253,963 4,034,033 131,005 




1 






39,647,211 349,S60,803 6,888,363 
II 


12,797,329 68,634,234 

1 


7,964,780 



62 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

RECAPITULATION— FREE STATES. 

nay, 28,427,799,680 lbs., @. H cent, $142,138,998 

Hemp, 443,520 " " 5 " 22,176 

Hops, 3,403,176 " " 15 " 519,476 

Flax, 3,048,278 " "10 " 304,S27 

Maple Sugar, 32,161,799 " " 8 " 2,572,943 

Tobacco, 14,752,0S7 " "10 " 1,475,20S 

Wool, 39,647,211 " "35 " 13,876,523 

Butter and Cheese, 349,860,S03 " "15 " 52,479,120 

Beeswax and Honey, 6,888,368 " " 15 " 1,033,255 

Total 28,878,064,922 lbs., valued as above, at $214,422,526 

RECAPITULATION— SLAVE STATES. 

Hay, 2,548,636,160 lbs., @ % cent, $12,743,1S0 

Hemp, 77,667,520 " " 5 " 3,883,876 

Hops, 33,780 " " 15 " 5,067 

Flax, 4,766,208 " "10 " 476,620 

MapleSugar, 2,0SS,6S7 " " 8 " 167,094 

Tobacco, 1S4,9S3,906 " "10 " 18,498,390 

Wool, 12,797,329 " "35 " 4,479,065 

Butter and Cheese, 68,634,234 " "15 " 10,295,135 

Beeswax and Honey, 7,904,780 " " 15 " 1,194,717 

Cotton, 978,311,600 " " 8 " 7S,264,92S 

CaneSugar, 237,133,000 " " 7 " 16,599,310 

Rice (rough) 215,313,497 " " 4 " 8,612,539 

Total, 4,334,040,701 lbs., valued as above, at $155,219,421 

TOTAL DIFFERENCE— rOUND-MEASURE PRODUCTS. 

Pounds. Value, 

Free States, 28,S78,064,922 $214,422,^20 

Slave States, 4,334,040,701 155,219,421 

Balance in pounds, . . . 24,544,024,221 Difference in value, $59,203,105 

Both quantity and value again in favor of the North ! 
Behold also the enormousness of the difference ! In this com- 
parison with the South, neither hundreds, thousands, nor 
millions, according to the regular method of computation, are 
sufficient to exhibit the excess of the pound-measure products 
of the North. Recourse must be had to an almost inconceiv- 
able number; billions must be called into play; and there are 
the figures telling us, with unmistakable emphasis and distinct- 
ness, that, in this department of agriculture, as in every other, 
the North is vastly the superior of the South — the figures 
showing a total balance in favor of the former of twenty-four 
billion five hundred and forty-four million twenty-four 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 63 

thousand two hundred and twenty-one pounds, valued atfifty- 
' nine millions two hundred and three thousand one hundred 
and five dollars. And yet the North, as we are unblushingly 
told by the fire-eating politicians of the South, is a poor, God- 
forsaken country, bleak, inhospitable, and unproductive ! 

What next ? Is it necessary to adduce other facts in order 
to prove that the rural wealth of the Free States is far greater 
than that of the Slave States ? Shall we make a further de- 
monstration of the fertility of Northern soil, or bring forward- 
new evidences of the inefficient and desolating system of terra- 
culture in the South ? Will nothing less than " confirmation 
strong as proofs of holy writ," suffice to convince the South 
that she is standing in her own light, and ruining both body 
and soul by the retention of slavery? Whatever duty and 
expediency require to be done, we are willing to do. Addi- 
tional proofs are at hand. Slaveholders and slave-breeders 
shall be convinced, confuted, convicted, and converted. They 
shall, in their hearts and consciences, if not with their tongues 
and pens, bear testimony to the triumphant achievements of 
Free Labor. In the two tables which immediately follow these 
remarks, they shall see how much more vigorous and fruitful the 
soil is when under the prudent management of free, white hus- 
bandmen, than it is when under the rude and nature-murdering 
tillage of enslaved negroes ; and in two subsequent tables they 
shall find that the live stock, slaughtered animals, farms, and 
farming implements and machinery, in the Free States, "are 
worth at least one thousand million of dollars more than the 
market value of the same in the Slave States ! In the face, 
however, of all these most significant and incontrovertible 
facts, the oligarchy have the unparalleled audacity to tell us that 
the South is the greatest agricultural country in the world, 
and that the North is a dreary waste, unfit for cultivation, 
and quite dependent on us for the necessaries of life. How 



64 



COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 



preposterously false all such babble is, the following tables 
will show : 

TABLE 8. 

ACTUAL CROPS PER ACRE, ON TIIE AVERAGE, IN THE FREE AND IN 
THE SLAVE STATES— 1850. 



ACTUAL CROPS PER ACRE 


ON THE 


ACTUAL CROPS PER ACRE, 


ON THE 


AVERAGE, IN THE FREE STATES — 1850. 


AVERAGE,. IN THE SLAVE STATES — 1850. 




j= 


« 


V, 


c . 


af 




j=" 


S 


« 


*• 


STATES. 


3 

.a 


3 


ja 


OS 


II 


STATES. 


& 


2 


.a 


n Coi 

shels 

Potat 

shels 




J3 


o 


t~. 


••5-° 
a 


~-° 




i 


c 




— - 


*S"° 


Connecticut 




21 




40 


85 


Alabama,.. 


5 


12 




15 


60 


Illinois, 


11 


29 


14 


83 


115 


Arkansas,. 




18 




22 




Indiana, . . . 


15i 


20 


18 


33 


100 


Delaware,. 


11 


20 




20 






14 


SB 




82 


100 


Florida 


15 








175 


Maine, 


10 






27 


120 


Georgia,... 


5 


IS 


7 


16 


125 




16 


2(5 


VA 


81 


1T0 


Kentucky,. 


8 


18 


11 


24 


130 


Michigan,... 


10 


26 




82 


140 


Louisiana,. 








16 




New Hamp., 


11 


80 




80 


220 


Maryland,. 


13 


21 


18 


23 


75 


New Jersey, 


11 


26 




83 




Mississippi, 


9 


12 




18 


105 


New York,.. 


12 


25 


n 


5H 


ioo 


Missouri, . . 


11 


26 




84 


110 


Ohio, 


12 


21 


25 


86 




N. Carolina 


7 


1(1 


15- 


17 


65 




18 






20 


75 


S. Carolina 


8 


12 




11 


70 


Rhode Is.,.. 




30 






100 


Tennessee, 


7 


19 


7 


21 


120 


Vermont,. . . 


13 




20 


82 


178 > 


Texas, 


15 






20 


250 


Wisconsin,.. 


14 


35 




80 




Virginia,... 


7 


13 


5 


18 


75 




101 


S25 


10T 


„436 


1,503 


121 


199 


C3 


275 


1,360 



RECAPITULATION OF ACTUAL CROPS PER ACRE, ON TIIE AVERAGE-1850. 



FREE STATES. 

Wheat, 12 bushels per acre. 

Oats, 27 " " 

Rye, 18 " " 

Indian Corn, 31 " " 

Irish Potatoes, 125 " " 



SLAVE STATES. 

Wheat, 9 bushels per acre. 

Oats, 17 

Rye, 11 

Indian Corn, 20 " " 

Irish Potatoes, 118 " " 



"What an obvious contrast between, the vigor of liberty and 
the impotence of slavery '? What an unanswerable argument 
in favor of free labor ! Add up the two columns of figures 
above, and what is the result ? Two hundred and thirteen 
bushels as the products of five acres in the North, and only 
one hundred and seventy bushels as the products of five acres 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 65 

in the South. Look at each item separately, and you will 
find that the average crop per acre of every article enume- 
rated is greater in the Free States than in the Slave States. 
Examine the table at large, and you will perceive that while 
Massachusetts produces sixteen bushels of wheat to the acre, 
Virginia produces only seven ; that Pennsylvania produces 
fifteen, and Georgia only five ; that while Iowa produces 
thirty-six bushels of oats to the acre, Mississippi produces only 
twelve ; that Rhode Island produces thirty, and North Caro- 
lina only ten ; that while Ohio produces twenty-five bushels of 
rye to the acre, Kentucky produces only eleven ; that Vermont 
produces twenty, and Tennessee only seven : that while Con- 
necticut produces forty bushels of Indian corn to the acre, 
Texas produces only twenty; that New Jersey produces 
thirty-three, and South Carolina only eleven ; that while New 
Hampshire produces two hundred and twenty bushels of 
Irish potatoes to the acre, Maryland produces only seventy- 
five ; that Michigan produces one hundred and forty, and 
Alabama only sixty. Noav for other beauties of slavery in 
another table : 



66 



COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 



TABLE 9. 



VALUE OF FAKMS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS IN THE FREE AND IN THE 
SLAVE STATES— 1S50. 



VALUE OF FAKMS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS 


VALUE OF FARMS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS 




IN THE FREE STATES- 


-1850. 




IN THE SLAVE STATES — 1850. 


STATES. 


[ Value of 
Live Stuck. 


Value of 

Animals 

Slaughtered. 


Cash Value of 
Farms, Farm- 
ing Imp., and 
Machinery. 


STATES. 


Value of 
Live Stock. 


Value of 

Animals 

Slaughtered. 


Cash Value of 
Farms, Farm- 
ing Imp., and 
Machinery. 


Cal.,... 


$3,351,05S 


$107,173 


$3,977,524 


Ala.,.. 


$21,690,112 


$4,823,485 


$69,448,887 


Conn., 


7,407,49(1 


2,202,266 


74,618,908 


Ark., . 


0,647,969 


1,163,313 


16,860,541 


III.,... 


24,209,25S 


4,972,2S6 


102,538,851 


Del.,... 


1,849,281 


373,665 


19,390,310 


Ind.,.. 


• 22,478,555 


6,567,935 


143,0S9,617 


Flo.,... 


2,8S0,05S 


514,685 


6,9S1,904 


Iowa,. 


3,089,275 


821,164 


17,830,430 


Ga.,... 


25,728,416 


6,339,762 


101,647,595 


Maine 


9,705,726 


1,646,773 


57,140,305 


Ky.,... 


29,661,436 


6,462,59S 


160,190,299 


Mass., 


9,047,710 


2,500,924 


112,285,981 


La., . . 


11,152,275 


1,458,990 


87,891,330 


Mich., 


3,00S,734 


1,328,327 


54,763,817 


Md.,... 


7,997,634 


1,954,800 


89,041,988 


N. II., 


8,S71,901 


1,522,S73 


57,560,122 


Miss.,. 


19,403,662 


3,636,582 


60,501,561 


N. J.,. 


10,679,291 


2,638,552 


124,003,014 


Mo.,... 


19,8S7,580 


3,367,106 


07, '207,008 


N. Y., 


73,570,499 


13,573,8S3 


576,631,508 


N. C.,. 


17,717,647 


6,767,866 


71,828,298 


Ohio., 


44,121,741 


7,439,243 


371,509,188 


S. c.,.. 


15,060,015 


3,502,637 


86,568,033 


Penn., 


41,500,053 


8,219,S48 


422,598,640 


Tenn., 


29,978,016 


6,401,765 


103,211,422 


R. I.,.. 


1,532,637 


667.4S6 


17,568,003 


Texas, 


10,412,927 


1,116,137 


18,701,712 


Vt.,... 


12,643,22S 


1,861,836 


66,100,509 


Va.,... 


33,656,659 


7,502,9S6 


223,423,315 


Wis., . 


4,897,385 


920,178 


30,170,131 
$2,233,058,619 












$2S6,374,541 


$56,990,247 


$253,723,687 $54,386,377 


$1,1S2,995,274 



RECAPITULATION— FREE STATES. 

Value of Live Stock, $286,374,541 

Value of Animals Slaughtered, 56,990,247 

Value of Farms, Farming Implements and Machinery, 2,233,058,019 

Total, $2,576,423,407 

RECAPITULATION— SLAVE STATES. 

Value of Live Stock, $253,723,087 

Value of Animals Slaughtered, 64,880,877 

Value of F'arms, Farming Implements and Machinery, 1,1S2,995,274 

Total, $1,491,105,83S 



DIFFERENCE IN VALUE— FARMS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 

Free States, $2,576,423,407 

jjlave States, 1,491,105,333 

Balance in favor of the Free States, $1 ,085,818,069 



FBEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 67 

By adding to this last balance in favor of the Free States 
the differences in value which we found hi their favor in our 
account of the bushel-and-pound-measure products, we shall 
have a very correct idea of the extent to which the undivided 
agricultural interests of the Free States preponderate over 
those of the Slave States. Let us add the differences to- 
gether, and see what will he the result. 

BALANCES— ALL IN FAVOR OF THE NORTH. 

Difference in the value of bushel measure products $45,797,991 

Difference in the value of pound-measure products 59,''203,'l05 

Difference in the value of farms and domestic animals l,0S5ji318,OC9 

Balance in favor of the Free States $1,190,319,105 

No figures of rhetoric can add emphasis or significance to 
these figures of arithmetic. They demonstrate conclusively 
the great moral triumph of Liberty over Slavery. They show 
unequivocally, in spite of all the blarney and boasting of 
slaveholding politicians, that the entire value of all the agri- 
cultural interests of the Free States is very nearly twice as 
great as the entire value of all the agricultural interests of the 
Slave States — the value of those interests in the former being 
twenty-five hundred million of dollars, that of those in the 
latter only fourteen hundred million, leaving a balance hi fa- 
vor of the Free States of one billion one hundred and ninety 
'million three hundred and nineteen thousand one hundred 
and sixty-Jive dollars I That is what we call a full, fair and 
complete vindication of Free Labor. Would we not be cor- 
rect in calling it a total eclipse of the Black Orb ? Can it be 
possible that the slaveholding oligarchy will ever have the 
hardihood to open their lips again on the subject of terra* 
culture in the South ? Dare they ever think of cotton again ? 
Ought they not, as a befitting confession of their villainous 
statism, and as a reasonable expiation for the countless evils 
which that statism has entailed on society, to clothe them, 



68 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

selves in sackcloth and ashes, and, after a suitable season of 
contrition and severe penance, follow the example of one Ju- 
das Iscariot, and go and hang themselves ? 

It will be observed that we have omitted the Territories 
and the District of Columbia in all the preceding tables. We 
did this purposely. Our object was to draw an equitable 
comparison between the value of free and slave labor in the 
thirty-one sovereign States, where the two systems, compara- 
tively unaffected by the wrangling of politicians, and, as a 
matter of course, free from the interference of the General 
Government, have had the fullest opportunities to exert their 
influence, to exhibit their virtues, and to commend themselves 
to the sober judgment of enlightened and discriminating 
minds. Had we counted the Territories on the side of the 
North, and the District of Columbia on the side of the South, 
the result would have been still greater in behalf of free la- 
bor. Though " the sum of all villainies " has.but a mere nomi- 
nal existence in Delaware and Maryland, we have invariably 
counted those States on the side of the South ; and the con- 
sequence is, that, in many particulars, the hopeless fortunes 
of slavery have been propped up and sustained by an impos- 
ing array of figures which of right ought to be regarded as 
the property of freedom. But we like to be generous to an 
unfortunate foe, and would utterly disdain the use of any un- 
fair means of attack or defence. 

"We shall take no undue advantage of slavery. It shall 
have a fair trial, and be judged according to its deserts. Al- 
ready has it been weighed in the balance, and found wanting ; 
it has been measured in the half-bushel, and found wanting ; 
it has been apprized in the field, and found wanting. What- 
ever redeeming traits or qualities it may possess, if any, shall 
be brought to light by subjecting it to other tests. 

It was our desire and intention to furnish a correct table 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 69 

of the gallon-measure products of the several States of the 
Union ; but we have not been successful in our attempts to 
procure the necessary statistics. Enough is known, however, 
to satisfy us that the value of the milk, wine, ardent s|:>irits, 
malt liquors, fluids, oils, and molasses, annually produced and 
sold in the Free States, is at least fifty million of dollars 
greater than the value of the same articles annually produced 
and sold in the Slave States. Of sweet milk alone, it is esti- 
mated that the monthly sales in three Northern cities, New 
York, Philadelphia and Boston, amount to a larger sum than 
the marketable value of all the rosin, tar, pitch, and turpen- 
tine, annually produced in the Southern States. 

Our efforts to obtain reliable information respecting an- 
other very important branch of profitable industry, the lum- 
ber* business, have also proved unavailing ; and we are left 
to conjecture as to the amount of revenue annually derived 
from it in the two grand divisions of our country. The per- 
son whose curiosity prompts him to take an account of the 
immense piles of Northern lumber now lying on the wharves 
and houseless lots in Baltimore, Richmond, and other slave- 
holding cities, will not, we imagine, form a very flattering 
opinion of the products of Southern forests. Let it be re- 
membered that nearly all the clippers, steamers, and small 
craft, are built at the North ; that large cargoes of Eastern 
lumber are exported to foreign countries ; that nine-tenths of 
the wooden-ware used in the Southern States is manufactured 
in New England ; that, in outrageous disregard of the natu- 
ral rights and claims of Southern mechanics, the markets of 
the South are forever filled with Northern furniture, vehicles, 
axe-helves, walking-canes, yard-sticks, clothes-pins and pen- 
holders ; that the extraordinary number of factories, steam- 
engines, forges and machine-shops in the Free States, require 
an extraordinary quantity of cord-wood; that a large majo- 



70 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

rity of the magnificent edifices and other structures, both pri- 
vate and public, in which timber, in its various forms, is ex- 
tensively used, are to be found in the Free States — we say, 
let all these things be remembered, and the truth will at 
once flash across the mind that the forests of the North are 
a source of far greater income than those of the South. The 
difference is simply this : At the North everything is turned 
to advantage. When a tree is cut down, the main body is 
sold or used for lumber, railing, or paling, the stump for 
matches or shoepegs, the knees for ship-building and the 
branches for fuel. At the South everything is either ne- 
glected or mismanaged. Whole forests are felled by the 
ruthless hand of slavery, the trees are cut into logs, rolled 
into heaps, covered with the limbs andbrusb, and then burned 
on the identical soil that gave them birth. The land itself 
next falls a prey to the fell destroyer, and that which was 
once a beautiful, fertile, and luxuriant woodland, is soon de- 
spoiled of all its treasures, and converted into an eye-offending 

desert. 

Were we to go beneath the soil and collect all the mineral 
and lapidarious wealth of the Free States — actually developed 
and in course of development — we should find it so much 
greater than the corresponding wealth of the Slave States, 
that no ordinary combination of figures would suffice to ex- 
press the difference. To say nothing of the gold and quick- 
silver of California, the iron and coal of Pennsylvania, the 
copper of Michigan, the lead of Illinois, or the salt of New 
York, the marble and free-stone quarries of JVcto England 
are, incredible as it may seem to those unacquainted with the 
facts, far more important sources of revemee than cdl the sub- 
terranea?i deiwsits of the Slave States. From the most reli- 
able statistics within our reach, we arc led to the inference 
that the total value of all the precious metals, rocks, minerals 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 71 

and medicinal waters, annually extracted from the bowels of 
the Free States, is not less than eighty-five million of dollars ; 
the whole value of the same substances annually brought up 
from beneath the surface of the Slave States does not exceed 
twelve millions. In this respect to what is our poverty 
ascribable ? To the same cause that has impoverished and 
dishonored us in all other respects — the thriftless and degrad- 
ing system of human slavery. 

Nature has been kind to us in all tilings. The strata and 
substrata of the South are profusely enriched with gold and 
silver, and precious stones, and from the natural orifices and 
aqueducts in Virginia and North Carolina, flow the purest 
healing waters in the world. But of what avail is all this 
latent wealth? Of what avail will it ever be, so long as 
slavery is permitted to play the dog in the manger? To 
these queries there can be but one reply. Slavery must be 
throttled; the South, so great and so glorious by nature, 
must be reclaimed from her infamy and degradation; our 
cities, fields and forests, must be kept intact from the unspar- 
ing monster ; the various and ample resources of our vast 
domain, subterranean as well as superficial, must be developed, 
and made to contribute to our pleasures and to the necessities 
of the world. 

A very significant chapter, and one particularly pertinent 
to many of the preceding pages, might be written on the De- 
cline of Agriculture in the Slave States ; but as the press of 
other subjects admonishes us to be concise upon this point, 
we shall present only a few of the more striking instances. 
In the first place, let us compare the crops of wheat and rye 
in Kentucky, in 1850, with the corresponding crops in the 
same State in 1840— after which, we will apply a similar rule 
of comparison to two or three other slaveholding States. 



72 



COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 



KENTUCKY. 
Wheat, bus. 

Crop of 1840 4,S03,152 

" 1S50 2,142,S22 

Decrease 2,660,330 bus. 

TENNESSEE. 
Wheat, bus. 

Crop of 1840 4,F.69,692 

1850 1,619,386 

Decrease 2,950,306 bus. 

VIRGINIA. 
Rye, bus. 

Crop of 1840 1,482,799 

1850.. 458,930 

Decrease 1,023,869 bus. 

ALABAMA. 
Wheat, bus. 

Crop of 1840 838,052 

" 1850 294,044 

Decrease 544,008 bus. 



Rye, bus. 

1,321,373 

415,073 

Decrease 906,300 bus. 



Tobacco, lbs. 
29,550,432 
20,14S,932 

Decrease 9,401,500 lbs. 



Tobacco, lbs. 
75,347,106 
56,803,227 



Decrease 18,543,379 lbs. 



Rye, bus. 
51,000 
17,261 

Decrease 33,739 bus. 



The story of these figures is too intelligible to require 
words of explanation ; we shall, therefore, drop this part of 
our subject, and proceed to compile a couple of tables that 
will exhibit on a single page the w r ealth, revenue and expendi- 
ture, of the several States of the confederacy. Let it be dis- 
tinctly understood, however, that, in the compilation of these 
tables, three million two hundred and four thousand three 
hundred and thirteen negroes are valued as personal property, 
and credited to the Southern States as if they were so many 
horses and asses, or bridles and blankets — and that no mone- 
tary valuation whatever is placed on any creature, of any age, 
color, sex, or condition, that bears the upright form of man 
in the free States. 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 



73 



TABLE lO. 

WEALTH, REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE OF THE FREE AND OF THE SLAVE 

STATES— 1850. 



WEALTH, REVENUE AND EXPEN 


"tITURE OF 


WEALTH, REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE 




THE FREE STATES — 1850. 


OF THE SLAVE STATES — 1850. 




Real and 




Expendi- 


STATES. 


Real and 
Personal 


Revenue. 


Expondi- 




l'roperty. 




$925,625 


Ala.,.. 


Property. 






Cal.,.. 


$22,161,S72 


$366,825 


$228,204,332 


$65S,976 


$513,559 


Conn., 


155,707,980 


150,189 


137,326 


Ark.,.. 


39,841,025 


68,412 


74,076 


111.,... 


156,265.00(5 


736,030 


192,940 


Del.,... 


18,855,863 






Ind.,.. 


202,650,264 


1,283,064 


1,061,605 


Flor.,.. 


23,198,734 


60,619 


55,234 


Iowa,. 


23,714,638 


139.0S1 


131,631 


Geo.,.. 


335,425,714 


1,142,405 


597,882 


Maine, 


122,777,571 


744, S79 


624,101 


Ky., .. 


301,028,456 


779,293 


674,697 


Mass., 


573,342,28(5 


59S,170 


674,622 


La 


233,998,704 


1, 146,56s 


1,09S,911 


Mich., 


59,767,255 


548,326 


431,918 


Md.,... 


219,217,304 


1,279,953 


1,300,458 


N. H., 


103,652.885 


141,686 


149,S90 


Miss.,.. 


228,951,130 


221,200 


223,637 


N. J.,.. 


153,151,619 


139,166 


180,614 


Mo., . . 


187,247,707 


326,579 


207,056 


N. Y.,. 


1,0S0,309,216 


2,698,310 


2,520,932 


N. C.,. 


220,800,472 


219,000 


228,178 


Ohio,.. 


504,726,120 


3,016,403 


2,736,060 


S. C.,.. 


288,257,694 


532,152 


468,021 


Penn., 


729,144,998 


7,716,552 


6,S76,4S0 


Tenn., 


207,454,704 


502,126 


623,625 


R.I.,.. 


80,50S,794 


124,944 


115,835 


Texas, 


55,862,840 


140,6SS 


156,622 


Vt 


02,2ii5,049 


185,830 


1S8,05S 


Va.,... 


391,646,43S 


1,265,744 


1,272,882 


Wis.,.. 


42,956,565 


135,155 


136,096 












$4,102,162,098 


$18,725,211 


$17,07S,733 




$2,936,090,737$S,343,715 


$7,549,983 



Entire Wealth of the Free States, $4,102,162,093 

Entire AVealth of the Slave States, including Slaves, 2,936,090,737 

Balance in favor of the Free States, $1,166,071,361 

What a 'towering monument to the beauty and glory of 
Free Labor ! What irrefragable evidence of the unequalled 
efficacy and grandeur of free institutions ! These figures arc, 
indeed, too full of meaning to be passed by without comment. 
The two tables from which they are borrowed are at least a 
volume -within themselves ; and, after all the pains we have 
taken to compile them, we shall, perhaps, feel somewhat dis- 
appointed if the reader fails to avail himself of the important 
information they impart. 

Human life, in all ages, has been made up of a series of 

4 



74: COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

adventures and experiments, and even at this stage of the 
world's existence, Ave are, perhaps, almost as destitute of a 
perfect rule of action, secular or religious, as were the erratic 
contemporaries of Noah. It is true, however, that we have 
made some progress in the right direction ; and as it seems 
to be the tendency of the world to correct itself, we may- 
suppose that future generations will be enabled, by intuition, 
to discriminate between the true and the false, the good and 
the bad, and that with the development of this faculty of the 
mind, error and discord will begin to wane, and finally cease 
to exist. Of all the experiments that have been tried by the 
people in America, slavery has proved the most fatal ; aud 
the sooner it is abolished the better it will be for us, for pos- 
terity, and for the world. One of the evils resulting from it, 
and that not the least, is apparent in the figures above. 
Indeed, the unprofitableness of slavery is a monstrous evil, 
when considered in all its bearings ; it makes us poor ; pov- 
erty makes us ignorant ; ignorance makes us wretched ; 
wretchedness makes us wicked, and Avickedness leads to — 
the devil ! 

" Ignorance is the curse of God, 
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." 

Facts truly astounding are disclosed in the two last tables, 
and Ave could heartily Avish that every intelligent American 
would commit them to memory. The total A T alue of all the 
real and personal property of the Free States, with an area of 
only 612,597 square miles, is one billion one hundred and 
sixty-six million eighty-one thousand three hundred and 
seventy-one dollars greater than the total A'alue of all the 
real and personal property, including the price of 3,204,313 
negroes, of the Slave States, which have an area of 851,508 
square miles! But extraordinary as this difference is in 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 75 

favor of the North, it is much less than the true amount. 
On the authority of Southrons themselves, it is demonstrable 
beyond the possibility of refutation that the intrinsic value 
of all the property in the Free States is more than three 
times greater than the intrinsic value of all the property in 
the Slave States. 

James Madison, a Southern man, fourth President of 
the United States, a most correct thinker, and one of the 
greatest statesmen the country has produced, " thought it 
wrong to admit the idea that there could be property in 
men," and we indorse, to the fullest extent, this opinion 
of the profound editor of the Federalist. We shall not 
recognize property in men ; the slaves of the South are 
not worth a groat in any civilized community; no man 
of genuine decency and refinement would hold them as 
property on any terms ; in the eyes of all enlightened nations 
and individuals, they are men, not merchandise. Southern 
pro-slavery politicians, some of whom have not hesitated to 
buy and sell their own sons and daughters, boast that the 
slaves of the South are worth sixteen hundred million of dol- 
lars, and we have seen the amount estimated as high as two 
thousand milhon. Mr. De Bow, the Southern superintendent 
of the seventh census, informs us that the value of all the 
property in the Slave States, real and personal, including 
slaves, was, in 1850, only $2,936,090,737; while, according 
to the same authority, the value of all the real and personal 
property in the Free States, genuine property, property that 
is everywhere recognized as property, was, at the same time, 
$4,102,162,098. Now all we have to do in order to ascer- 
tain the real value of all the property of the South, independ- 
ent of negroes, whose value, if valuable at all, is of a local 
and precarious character, is to subtract from the sum total 
of Mr. De Bow's return of the entire wealth of the Slave 



76 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

States the estimated value of the slaves themselves ; and then, 
by deducting the difference from the intrinsic value of all the 
property in the Free States, we shall have the exact amount 
of the overplus of wealth in the glorious land of free soil, free 
labor, free speech, free presses, and free schools. And now 
to the task. 

Entire Wealth of the Slave States, including Slaves, $2,930,000,737 

Estimated Value of the Slaves, 1,000,000,000 

True Wealth of the Slave States, $1,336,090,737 

True Wealth of the Free States, $4,102,162,09S 

True Wealth of the Slave States 1,336,090,737 

Balance in favor of the Free States, . $2,706,071,361 

There, friends of the South and of the North, you have 
the conclusion of the whole matter. Liberty and slavery are 
before you ; choose which you will have ; as for us, in the 
memorable language of the immortal Henry, we say, " give 
us liberty, or give us death!" In the great struggle for 
wealth that has been going on between the two rival systems 
of free and slave labor, the balance above exhibits the net 
profits of the former. The struggle on the one side has been 
calm, laudable, and eminently successful ; on the other, it has 
been attended by tumult, unutterable cruelties and disgrace- 
ful failure. We have given the slave oligarchy every con- 
ceivable opportunity to vindicate their domestic policy, but 
for them to do it is a moral impossibility. 

Less than three-quarters of a century ago, say in 1789, for 
that Avas about the average time of the abolition of slavery in 
the Northern States, the South, with advantages in soil, climate, 
rivers, harbors, minerals, forests, and, indeed, almost every 
other natural resource, began an even race with the North 
in all the important pursuits of life ; and now, in the brief 
space of scarce three score years and ten, avc find her com- 
pletely distanced, enervated, dejected and dishonored. Slave- 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 77 

owners and slave-drivers are the sole authors of her disgrace ; 
as they have sown, so let them reap. 

As we have seen above, a careful and correct inventory of 
all the real and personal property in the two grand divisions 
of the country, discloses the astounding fact, that in 1850, the 
Free States were worth precisely two thousand seven hun- 
dred and sixty-six million seventy-one thousand three hun- 
dred and sixty-one dollars more than all the Slave States ! 
Twenty-seven hundred million of dollars ! Think of it ! 
What a vast and desirable sum, and how much better off the 
South would be with it than without it ! Such is the enor- 
mous amount out of which slavery has defrauded us during 
the space of sixty-one years — from 1789 to 3 850 — being an 
average of about forty-five million three hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars per annum. During the last twenty-five or 
thirty years, however, our annual losses have been far greater 
than they were formerly. There has been a gradual increase 
every year, and now the ratio of increase is almost incredible. 
No patriotic Southerner can become conversant with the 
facts without experiencing a feeling of alarm and indignation. 
Until the North abolished slavery, she had no advantage 
of us whatever ; the South was more than her equal in every 
respect. But no sooner had she got rid of that hampering 
and pernicious institution than she began to absorb our 
wealth, and now it is confidently believed that the merchants 
and slaveholding pleasure-seekers of the South annifally pour 
one hundred and twenty million of dollars into her coffers ! 
Taking into account, then, the probable amount of money that 
has been drawn from the South and invested in the North 
within the last nine years, and adding it to the grand balance 
above— the net profits of the North up to 1850— it may be 
safely assumed that, in the present year of grace, 1860, the 
Free States are worth at least thirty-five hundred million of 



78 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

dollars more than the Slave States ! Let him who dares, 
gainsay these remarks and calculations ; no truthful tongue 
will deny them ; no honorable pen can controvert them. 

One more word now as to the valuation of negroes. Were 
our nature so degraded, or our conscience so elastic as to per- 
mit us to set a price upon men, as we would set a price upon 
cattle and corn, we should be content to abide by the appraise- 
ment of the slaves at the South, and would then enter into a 
calculation to ascertain the value of foreigners to the North. 
Not long since it was declared, even in the South, that " one 
free laborer is equal to five slaves," and as there are two mil- 
lion five hundred thousand Europeans in the Free States, all 
of whom are free laborers, we might bring Southern authority 
to back us hi estimating their value at sixty-tic o hundred mil- 
lion of dollars — a handsome sum wherewithal to offset the 
account of sixteen hundred million of dollars, brought for- 
ward as to the value of Southern slaves ! It is obvious, there- 
fore, that if we were disposed to follow the barbarian example 
of the traffickers in human flesh, we could prove the North 
vastly richer than the South in bone and sinew — to say nothing 
of mind and morals, which shall receive our attention hereaf- 
ter. The North has just as much right to appraise the Irish 
immigrant, as the South has to set a price on the African 
slave. But as it would be wrong to do either, we shall do 
neither. It is not our business to think of man as a merchant- 
able commodity ; and we will not, even by implication, admit 
"the wild and guilty fantasy," that the condition of chattel- 
hood may rightfully attach to sentient and immortal beings. 

For the purpose of showing what Virginia, once the richest, 
most populous, and most powerful of the States, has become 
under the blight of slavery, we shall now introduce an extract 
from one of the speeches delivered by Governor Wise, during 
a late gubernatorial campaign in that degraded commonwealth. 



FREE AND TIIE SLAVE STATES. 79 

Addressing a Virginia audience, in language as graphic as it 
is truthful, he says : 

" Commerce has long ago spread her sails, and sailed away from 
you. You have not, as yet, dug more than coal enough to warm 
yourselves at your own hearths ; you have set no tilt-hammer of Vul- 
can to strike Mows worthy of gods in your own iron-foundries ; you 
have not yet spun more than coarse cotton enough, in the way of 
manufacture, to clothe your own slaves. You have no commerce, 
no mining, no manufactures. You have relied alone on the single 
power of agriculture, and such agriculture! Your sedge-patchee 
outshine the sun. Your inattention to your only source of 
wealth, has seared the very hosom of mother earth. Instead of hav- 
ing to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to chase the 
stump-tailed steer through the sedge-patches to procure a tough 
heef-steak. The present condition of things has existed too long in 
Virginia. The landlord has skinned the tenant, and the tenant has 
skinned the land, until all have grown poor together." 

With tears in its eyes, and truth on its lips, for the first time 
after an interval of twenty years, the " Richmond Enquirer " 
helps to paint the melancholy picture. In 1852, that journal 
thus bewailed the condition of Virginia : 

"Wo have cause to feel deeply for our situation. Philadelphia 
herself contains a population far greater than the whole free popula- 
tion of Eastern Virginia. The little State of Massachusetts has an 
aggregate wealth exceeding that of Virginia hy more than 
$126,000,000." 

Just a score of years before these words were penned, the 
same paper, then edited by the elder Ritchie, made a most 
earnest appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of Virginia, 
to adopt an effectual measure for the speedy overthrow of 
tte pernicious system of human bondage. Here is an extract 



80 COMPARISONS BETWEEN TIIE 

from an article which appeared in its editorial column under 
date of January 7th, 1832 : 

"Something must be done, and it is the part of no honest man to 
deny it — of no free press to affect to conceal it. When this dark 
population is growing upon us ; when every new census is but gather- 
ing its appalling numbers upon us; when, within a period equal to 
tfliat in which this Federal Constitution has been in existence, these 
numbers will increase to more than two millions within Virginia ; 
when our sister States are closing their doors upon our blacks for 
sale, and when our whites are moving westwardly, in greater num- 
bers than we like to hear of, when this the fairest land on all this 
continent, for soil, and climate, and situation, combined, might be- 
come a sort of garden spot, if it were worked by the hands of white 
men alone, can we, Ought we, to sit quietly down, fold our arms, and 
say to each other, ' Well, well ; this thing will not come to the worst 
in our days; we will leave it to our children and our grandchildren, 
and great-grandchildren, to take care of themselves, and to brave the 
storm! Is this to act like wise men? Means sure but gradual, 
systematic but discreet, ought to be adopted, for reducing the mass 
of evil which is pressing upon the South, and will still more press 
upon her, the longer it is put off. We say now, in the utmost sin- 
cerity of our hearts, that our wisest men cannot give too much of 
their attention to this subject, nor can they give it too soon." 

Better abolition doctrine than this is seldom heard. Why 
did not the " Enquirer" continue to preach it ? What potent 
influence hushed its clarion voice, just as it began to be lifted 
in behalf of a liberal policy and an enlightened humanity? Had 
Mr. Ritchie continued to press the truth home to the hearts 
of the people, as he should have done, Virginia, instead of 
being worth only $392,000,000 in 1850 — negroes and all — 
would have been worth at least $800,000,000 in genuine pro- 
perty ; and if the State had emancipated her slaves at the time 
of the adoption of the Constitution, the last census would no 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 81 

doubt have reported her wealth, and correctly, at a sum ex- 
ceeding a thousand million -of dollars. 

Listen now to the statement of a momentous fact. The 
value of all the property, real and personal, including slaves, 
in seven Slave States, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, 
Missouri, Arkansas, Florida and Texas, is less than the real 
and personal estate, which is unquestionable property, in the 
single State of New York. Nay, worse ; if eight entire slave 
States, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Mis- 
sissippi, Tennessee and Texas, and the District of Columbia — 
with all their hordes of human merchandise — were put up at 
auction, New York could buy them all, and then have one 
hundred and thirty-three million of dollars left in her pocket ! 
Such is the amazing contrast between freedom and slavery, 
even in a pecuniary point of view. When we come to com- 
pare the North with the South in regard to literature, general 
intelligence, inventive genius, moral and religious enterprises, 
the discoveries in medicine, and the progress in the arts and 
sciences, we shall, in every instance, find the contrast equally 
great on the side of Liberty. 

It gives us no pleasure to say hard things of the Old Do- 
minion, the mother of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and 
other illustrious patriots, who, as Ave shall prove hereafter, 
were genuine abolitionists ; but the policy which she has pur- 
sued has been so utterly inexcusable, so unjust to the non- 
slaveholding whites, so cruel to the negroes, and so disregard- 
ful of the rights of humanity at large, that it becomes the duty 
of every one who makes allusion to her history, to expose her 
follies, her crimes, and her poverty, and to publish every fact, 
of whatever nature, that would be instrumental in determin- 
ing others to eschew her bad example. She has willfully de- 
parted from the faith of the founders of this Repuublic. She 
has not only turned a deaf ear to the counsel of wise men 

4* 



82 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

from other States in the Union, but she has, in like manner, 
ignored the teachings of the great warriors and statesmen 
who have sprung from her own soil. In a subsequent chapter, 
we expect to show that all, or nearly all, the distinguished 
Virginians, whose bodies have been consigned to the grave, 
but whose names have been given to history, and whose me- 
moirs have a place in the hearts of their countrymen, were 
the friends and advocates of universal freedom — that they 
were inflexibly opposed to the extension of slavery into the 
Territories, devised measures for its restriction, and, with 
hopeful anxiety, looked forward to the time when it should be 
eradicated from the States themselves. With them r the res- 
cue of our country from British domination, and the establish- 
ment of the General Government upon a firm basis, were con- 
siderations of paramount importance ; they supposed, and no 
doubt earnestly desired, that the States, in their sovereign 
capacities, would soon abolish a system of wrong and despot- 
ism which was so palpably in conflict with the principles enun- 
ciated in the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, it would 
seem that, among the framers of that immortal instrument 
and its equally immortal sequel, the Constitution of the United 
States, there was a tacit understanding to this effect ; and the 
Northern States, true to their implied faith, abolished it 
within a short period after our national independence had 
been secured. Not so with the South. She has jiertinaciously 
refused to perform her duty. She has apostatized from the 
faith of her greatest men, and even at this very moment repu- 
diates the sacred principle that "all men are endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable rights," among which 
"are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It is evi- 
dent, therefore, that the Free States are the only members 
of this confederacy that have established republican forms 
of government based upon the theories of Washington, 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 83 

Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and other eminent statesmen of 
Virginia. 

The great revolutionary movement which was set on foot 
in Charlotte, Mecklenberg county, North Carolina, on the 
20th day of May, 1775, has not yet been terminated, nor will 
it be, until every slave in the United States is freed from the 
tyranny of his master. Every victim of the vile institution, 
whether white or black, must be reinvested with the sacred 
rights and privileges of which he has been divested by an in- 
human oligarchy. What our noble sires of the revolution left 
unfinished it is our duty to complete. They did all that true 
valor and patriotism could accomplish. Not one iota did they 
swerve from their plighted faith ; the self-sacrificing spirit 
which they evinced will command the applause of every suc- 
ceeding age. Not in vindication of their own personal rights 
merely, but of the rights of humanity ; not for their own gene- 
ration and age simply, but for all ages to the end of time, they 
gave their toil, their treasure and their blood, nor deemed 
them all too great a price to pay for the establishment of so 
comprehensive and beneficent a principle. Let their posterity 
emulate their courage, their disinterestedness, and their zeal, 
and especially remember that it is the duty of every existing 
generation so to provide for its individual interests, as to con- 
fer superior advantages on that which is to follow. To this 
principle the North has adhered with the strictest fidelity. 

How has it been with the South ? Has she imitated the 
praiseworthy example of our illustrious ancestors? No! 
She has treated it with the utmost contempt ; she has been 
extremely selfish— so selfish, indeed, that she has robbed pos- 
terity of its natural, inalienable rights. From the period of 
the formation of the government down to the present moment, 
her policy has been downright suicidal,- and, as a matter of 
course, wholly indefensible. She has hugged a viper to her 



84 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

breast ; her whole system has been paralyzed, her conscience 
is seared, and, still holding in her embrace the cause of her 
shame and suffering, she is becoming callous to every principle 
of justice and magnanimity. Except among the non-slave- 
holders, who, besides being kept in the grossest ignorance, are 
under the restraint of all manner of iniquitous laws, patriotism 
has almost ceased to exist within her borders. And here we 
desire to be distinctly understood, for Ave shall have occasion 
to refer to this matter again. "VYe repeat, therefore, the sub- 
stance of oxir averment, that, at this day, there is scarcely a 
grain of pure patriotism in the South, except among the non- 
slaveholders. Subsequent pages shall testify to the truth of 
this assertion. Here and there, it is true, a slaveholder, 
disgusted with the system, becomes ashamed of himself, 
emancipates his negroes, and enters upon the walks of honor- 
able life ; but these cases are exceedingly rare, and do not, in 
any manner, disprove the general correctness of our remark. 
All persons who do voluntarily manumit their slaves, as men- 
tioned above, are undeniably actuated by principles of pure 
patriotism, justice and humanity ; and so believing, we delight 
to do them honor. 

Once more to the Old Dominion. At her door Ave lay the 
bulk of the evils of slavery. The first African sold in America 
was sold on James River, in that State, on the 20th of August 
1620 ; and although the institution was fastened upon her and 
the other colonies by the mother country, she was the first to 
pei* eive its blighting and degrading influences, her wise men 
Avere the first to denounce it, and, after the British power 
was overthrown at Yorktown, she should have been the first 
to abolish it. Sixty years ago she A\\as the Empire State ; 
now, Avith half a dozen other slaveholding States thrown into 
the scale with her, she is far inferior to NeAv York, which, at 
the time Cormvallis surrendered his SAVord to Washington, 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 85 

was less than half her equal. Had she obeyed thg counsels of 
the good, the great and the wise men of our nation — espe- 
cially of her own incomparable sons, the extendible element 
of slavery would have been promptly arrested, and the virgin 
soil of nine Southern States, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, 
Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, 
would have been saved from its horrid pollutions. Confined 
to the original States in which it existed, the system would 
soon have been disposed of by legislative enactments, and long 
before the present day, by a gradual process that could have 
shocked no interest and alarmed no prejudice, we should have 
rid ourselves not only of African slavery, which is an abomi- 
nation and a curse, but also of the negroes themselves, who, 
in our judgment, whether viewed in relation to their actual 
characteristics and condition, or through the strong anti- 
pathies of the whites, are, to say the least, an undesirable 
population. 

This, then, is the ground of our expostulation with Vir- 
ginia ; that, in stubborn disregard of the advice and friendly 
warnings of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and a 
host of other distinguished patriots who sprang from her soil 
— patriots whose voices shall be heard before we finish our 
task — and in utter violation of every principle of justice and 
humanity, she still persists in fostering an institution or sys- 
tem which is so manifestly detrimental to her vital interests. 
Every Virginian, whether living or dead, whose name is an 
honor to his country, has placed on record his abhorrence of 
slavery, and in doing so, has borne testimony to the blight 
and degradation that everywhere follow in its course. One 
of the best abolition speeches we have ever read was delivered 
in the Virginia House of Delegates, January 20th, 1832, by 
Charles James Faidkner, who still lives, and who has, we un- 
derstand, generously emancipated several of his slaves, and 



86 COMPAEISONS BETWEEN THE 

sent them }o Liberia. Here follows an extract from his 
speech ; let Southern politicians read it attentively, and im- 
bibe a moiety of the spirit of patriotism which it breathes: 

" Sir, I am gratified to perceive that no gentleman has yet risen in 
this Hall, the avowed advocate of slavery. The day has gone by 
when such a voice could he listened to with patience, or even with for- 
bearance. I even regret, sir, that we should find those amongst us who 
enter the lists of discussion as its ajwlogists, except alone upon the 
ground of uncontrollable necessity. And yet, who could have lis- 
tened to the very eloquent remarks of the gentleman from Brunswick, 
without being forced to conclude that he at least considered slavery, 
however, not to be defended 'upon principle, yet as being divested of 
much of its enormity, as you approach it in practice. 

" Sir, if there be one who concurs with that gentleman in the 
harmless character of this institution, let me request him to compare 
the condition of the slaveholding portion of this commonwealth — 
barren, desolate and seared as ittcere by the avenging hand of Heaven 
— with the descriptions which we have of this country from those 
who first broke its virgin soil. To what is this change ascribable ? 
Alone to the withering and blasting effects of slavery. If this does 
not satisfy him, let me request him to extend his travels to the North- 
ern States of this Union, and beg him to contrast the happiness and 
contentment which prevail throughout that country, the busy and 
cheerful sound of industry, the rapid and swelling growth of their 
population, their means and institutions of education, their skill and 
proficiency in the useful arts, their enterprise and public spirit, the 
monuments of their commercial and manufacturing industry ; and, 
above all, their devoted attachment to the government from which 
they derive their protection, with the derision, discontent, indolence 
and poverty of the Southern country. To what, sir, is all this ascrib- 
able? To that vice in the organization of society, by which one-half 
of its inhabitants are arrayed in interest and feeling against the other 
half— to that unfortunate state of society in which freemen regard 
labor as disgraceful, and slaves shrink from it as a burden tyrannic- 
ally imposed upon them— to that condition of things in which half a 



FREE AND. THE SLAVE STATES. 87 

million of your population can feel no sympathy with the society in 
the prosperity of which they are forbidden to participate, and no at- 
tachment to a government at whose hands they receive nothing but 
injustice. 

"If this should not be sufficient, and the curious and incredulous 
inquirer should suggest that the contrast which has been adverted 
to, and which is so manifest^ might be traced to a difference of cli- 
mate, or other causes distinct from slavery itself, permit me to refer 
him to the two States of Kentucky and Ohio. No difference of soil, 
no diversity of climate, no diversity in the original settlement of 
those two States, can account for the remarkable disproportion in 
their natural advancement. Separated by a river alone, they seem to 
have teen purposely and providentially designed to exhibit in their 
future histories the difference ichich necessarily results from a coun- 
try free from, and a country afflicted with, the curse of slavery. 

"Vain and idle is every effort to strangle this inquiry. As well 
might you attempt to chain the ocean, or stay the avenging thunder- 
bolts of Heaven, as to drive the people from any inquiry which may 
result in their better condition. This is too deep, too engrossing a 
subject of consideration. It addresses itself too strongly to our inte- 
rests, to our passions, and to our feelings. I shall advocate no scheme 
that does not respect the right of property, so far as it is entitled to 
he respected, with a just regard to the safety and resources of the 
State. I would approach the subject as one of great magnitude and 
delicacy, as one whose varied and momentous consequences demand 
the calmest and most deliberate investigation. But still, sir, I would 
approach it — aye, delicate as it may be, encompassed as it may be 
with difficulties and hazards, I would still approach it. The people 
demand it. Their security requires it. In the language of the wise 
and prophetic Jefferson, 'You must approach it — you must bear it — 
you must adopt some plan of emancipation, or worse will follow.' " 

Mr. Curtis, in a speech in the Virginia Legislature in 1832, 
said : 

"There is a malaria in the atmosphere of these regions, which the 
new comer shuns, as being deleterious to his views and habits. See 



88 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

the wide-spreading ruin which the avarice of our ancestral govern- 
ment has produced in the South, as witnessed in a sparse population 
of freemen, deserted habitations, and fields without culture ! Strange 
to tell, even the wolf, driven back long since by the approach of 
man, now returns, after the lapse of a hundred years, to howl over 
the desolations of slavery." 

Mr. Moore, also a member of the Legislature of Virginia, 
in speaking of the evils of slavery, said : 

" The first I shall mention is the irresistible tendency which it has 
to undermine and dostroy everything like virtue and morality in the 
community. If we look back through the long course of time which 
has elapsed since the creation to the present moment, we shall 
scarcely be able to point out a people whose situation was not, in 
many respects, preferable to our own, and that of the other States, 
in which negro slavery exists. 

"In that part of the State below tide-water, the whole face of the 
country wears an appearance of almost utter desolation, distressing 
to the beholder. The very spot on which our ancestors landed, a 
little more than two hundred years ago, appears to be on the eve of 
again becoming the haunt of wild beasts." 

Mr. Rives, of Campbell county, said : 

" On the multiplied and desolating evils of slavery, he wa.. not dis- 
posed to say much. The curse and deteriorating consequceoe were 
within the observation and experience of the members of the House 
and the people of Virginia, and it did not seem to him that there 
could bo two opinions about it." 

Mr. Powell said : 

"I can scarcely persuade myself that there is a solitary gentleman 
in this House who will not readily admit thai slavery is an evil, and 
that its removal, if practicable, is a consummation most devoutly to 
be wished. I have not heard, nor do I expect to hear, a voice raised 
in this hall to the contrary." 



FEEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 89 

In the language of the " New York Times," " we might 
multiply extracts almost indefinitely from Virginia authorities 
— testifying to the blight and degradation that have over- 
taken the Old Dominion, in every department of her affairs. 
Her commerce gone, her agriculture decaying, her land lull- 
ing in value, her mining and manufactures nothing, her schools 
dying out — she presents, according to the testimony of her 
own sons, the saddest of all pictures — that of a sinking and 
dying State." Every year leaves her in a worse condition 
than it found her; and as it is with Virginia, so it is with the 
entire South. In the terse language of Gov. Wise, " all have 
grown poor together." The black god of slavery, which the 
South has worshipped for two hundred and thirty-nine years, 
is but a devil in disguise ; and if Ave would save ourselves 
from being ingulfed in utter ruin we must repudiate this foul 
god for a purer deity, and abandon his altars for a holier 
shrine. No time is to be lost ; his fanatical adorers, the de- 
spotic adversaries of human liberty, are concocting schemes 
for the enslavement of all the laboring classes, irrespective of 
race or color. The issue is before us ; we cannot evade it ; 
Ave must meet it Avith firmness, and Avith unflinching valor. 

We have been credibly informed by a gentleman from 
PoAvhattan County in Virginia, that in the year 1836 or '37, 
or about that time, the Hon. Abbott Lawrence, of Boston, 
backed by his brother Amos and other millionaires of New- 
England, Avent doAvn to Richmond with the sole view of re- 
connoitering the manufacturing facilities of that place — fully 
determined, if pleased with the water-poAver, to erect a large 
number of cotton-mills and machine-shops. He had been in 
the capital of Virginia only a day or tAVO before he discovered, 
much to his gratification, that nature had shaped everything 
to his liking ; and as he Avas a biisiness man, AA'ho transacted 
business in a business-like manner, he lost no time in making 



90 



COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 



preliminary arrangements for the consummation of his noble 
purpose. His mission was one of peace and promise ; others 
were to share the benefits of his concerted and laudable 
scheme ; thousands of poor boys and girls in Virginia, instead of 
growing up in extreme poverty and ignorance, or of having to 
emigrate to the Free States of the West, were to have avenues 
of profitable employment opened to them at home ; thus they 
would be enabled to earn an honest and rejratable living, to 
establish and sustain free schools, free libraries, free lectures, 
and free presses, to become useful and exemjilary members of 
society, and to die eventually fit candidates for heaven. The 
magnanimous New Englander was in ecstasies with the pros- 
pect that ojjened before him. Individually, so far as mure 
money was concerned, he was perfectly independent ; his 
industry and economy in early life had secured to him the 
ownership and control of an ample fortune. With the aid of 
eleven other men, each equal to himself, he could have bought 
the whole city of Richmond — negroes and all — though it is not 
to be presumed that he would have disgraced his name by 
becoming a trader in human flesh. But he was not selfish; 
unlike the arrogant and illiberal slaveholder, he did not regard 
himself as the centre around whom everybody else should 
revolve. On the contrary, he was a genuine philanthropist. 
While, with a shrewdness that will command the admiration 
of every practical business man, he engaged in nothing that 
did not swell the dimensions of his own purse, he was yet 
always solicitous to invest his capital in a manner calculated 
to promote the interests of those around him. Nor was he 
satisfied with simply furnishing the means Avhereby his less 
fortunate neighbors were to become prosperous, intelligent, 
and contented. With his generous heart and sagacious mind 
he delighted to aid them in making a judicious application of 
his wealth to their own use. Moreover, as a member of 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 91 

society, he felt that the community had some reasonable 
claims upon him, and he made it obligatory on himself con- 
stantly to devise plans and exert his personal efforts for the 
public good. Such was the character of the distinguished 
manufacturer Avho honored Richmond with his presence twenty 
odd years ago ; such was the character of the men whom he 
represented, and such were the grand designs which they 
sought to accomplish. 

To the enterprising and moneyed descendants of the Pil- 
grim Fathers it was a matter of no little astonishment, that 
the immense water-power of Richmond had been so long 
neglected. He expressed his surprise to a number of Vir- 
ginians, and was at a loss to know why they had not, long 
prior to the period of his visit among them, availed them- 
selves of the powerful element that is eternally gushing and 
foaming over the falls of James River. Innocent man ! He 
was utterly unconscious of the fact that he was " interfering 
with the beloved institutions of the South," and little was he 
prepared to withstand the terrible denunciations that were 
immediately showered on his head through the columns of the 
Richmond papers. Few words will suffice to tell the sequel. 
Those negro-driving sheets, whose hireling policy for the last 
five and twenty years has been to support the worthless black 
slave and his tyrannical master, at the expense of the free 
white laborer, wrote down the enterprise, and the noble son 
of New England, abused, insulted and disgusted, quietly re- 
turned to Massachusetts, and there employed his capital in 
building up the cities of Lowell and Lawrence, either of which, 
in all those elements of material and social prosperity that 
make up the greatness of States, is already far in advance of 
the most important of all the seedy and squalid slave-towns in 
the Old Dominion. Such is an inkling of the infamous means 
and measures that have been resorted to, from time to time, 



92 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

for the purpose of upholding and perpetuating in America 
the accursed system of human slavery. 

How any rational man in this or any other country, with 
the astounding contrasts between Freedom and Slavery ever 
looming in his view, can offer an apology for the existing 
statism of the South, is to us a most inexplicable mystery. 
Indeed, we cannot conceive it possible that the conscience of 
any man, who is really sane, would permit him to become the 
victim of such an egregious and diabolical absurdity. There- 
fore, at this period of our history, with the light of the past, 
the reality of the present, and the prospect of the future, all 
so prominent and so palpable, we infer that every person who 
sets up an unequivocal defence of Human Bondage, must, of 
necessity, be either a fool, a knave, or a madman. 

It is much to be regretted that pro-slavery men look at but 
one side of the question. Of all the fanatics in the country, 
they have, of late, become the most unreasonable and ridi- 
culous. Let them deliberately view the subject of slavery in 
all its asjiccts and bearings, and if they are possessed of 
honest hearts and convincible minds, they will readily per- 
ceive the grossness of their past errors, renounce their 
allegiance to a cause so unjust and disgraceful, and at once 
enroll themselves among the hosts of Freedom and the 
friends of universal Liberty. There are thirty-three States 
in the Union ; let them drop California, Minnesota and Ore- 
gon, and then institute fifteen comparisons, first comparing 
New York with Virginia, Pennsylvania with Carolina, Mas- 
sachusetts with Georgia, and so on, until they shall have 
exhausted the catalogue. Then, for once, let them be bold 
enough to listen to the admonitions of their own souls, and if 
they do not soon start to their feet demanding the abolition 
of slavery, it will only be because they have reasons for sup- 
pressing their inmost sentiments. Whether we compare tlie 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 93 

old Free States with the old Slave States, or the new Free 
States with the new Slave States, the difference, unmistakable 
and astounding, is substantially the same. All the Free 
States are alike, and all the Slave States are alike. In the 
former, wealth, intelligence, power, progress, and prosperity, 
are the prominent characteristics ; in the latter, poverty, 
ignorance, imbecility, inertia, and extravagance, are the dis- 
tinguishing features. To be convinced, it is only necessary 
for us to open our eyes and look at facts — to examine the 
Statistics of the country, to free ourselves from obstinacy 
and prejudice, and to unbar our minds to the convictions of 
truth. Let figures be the umpire. Close attention to the 
preceding and subsequent tables is all Ave ask ; so soon as 
they shall be duly considered and understood, the primary 
object of this work will have been accomplished. 

Not content with eating out the vitals of the South, slavery, 
in keeping Avith the character which it has acquired for 
insatiety and rapine, is beginning to make rapid encroach- 
ments on neAv territory ; and as a basis for a few remarks on 
the blasting influence which it is shedding over the broad 
and fertile domains of the West, Avhich, in accordance with 
the views and resolutions offered by the immortal Jefferson, 
should have been irrevocably dedicated to Freedom, Ave beg 
leave to call the attention of the reader to a plain, faithful 
presentation of the philosophy of free and slave labor. Says 
the " North American and United States Gazette :" 

""We have but to compare the States, possessing equal natural 
advantages, in which the two kinds of labor are employed, in order 
to decide with entire confidence as to which kind is the more profit- 
able. At the origin of the government, Virginia, with a much 
larger extent of territory than New York, contained a population of 
seven hundred and fifty thousand, and sent ten representatives to 
Congress ; while New York contained a population of three hundred 



94 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

aud forty thousand, and sent six representatives to Congress. Be- 
hold how the figures are reversed. The population of New York is 
three and a half millions, represented by thirty -three members in 
Congress ; while the population of Virginia is but little more than 
one and a half millions, represented by thirteen members in Con- 
gress. It is the vital sap of free labor that makes the one tree so 
thrifty and vigorous, so capable of bearing with all ease the fruit of 
such a population. And it is slave labor which strikes a decadence 
through the other, drying up many of its branches with a fearful 
sterility, and rendering the rest but scantily fruitful ; really incap- 
able of sustaining more. Look at Ohio, teeming with inhabitants, 
its soil loaded with every kind of agricultural wealth, its people 
engaged in every kind of freedom's diversified employments, abound- 
ing with numberless happy homes, and with all the trophies of civi- 
lization, and it exhibits the magic effect of free labor, waking a 
wilderness into life and beauty; while Kentucky, with equal or 
superior natural advantages, nature's very garden in this Western 
world, which commenced its career at a much earlier date, and was 
in a measure populous when Ohio was but a slumbering forest, but 
which in all the elements of progress, is now left far, very far, 
behind its young rival, shows how slave labor hinders the develop- 
ment of wealth among a people, and brings a blight on their pros- 
perity. The one is a grand and beautiful poem in honor of free 
labor. The other is an humble confession to the world of the 
inferiority of slave labor." 

Were we simply a freesoiler, or anything else less than a 
thorough and uncompromising abolitionist, Ave should cer- 
tainly tax our ability to the utmost to get up a cogent argu- 
ment against the extension of slavery over any part of our 
domain where it does not now exist ; but as our principles 
are hostile to the institution even where it does exist, and, 
therefore, by implication and in fact, more hostile still to its 
introduction into new territory, we forbear the preparation of 
any special remarks on this particular subject. 



FKEE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 95 

With regard to the unnational and demoralizing system of 
slavery, we believe the majority of Northern people are too 
scrupulous. They seem to think that it is enough for them 
to be mere freesoilers, to keep in cheek the diffusive element 
of slavery, and to prevent it from crossing over the bounds 
within which it is now regulated by municipal law. Remiss 
in their National duties, as we contend, they make no posi- 
tive attack upon the institution in the Southern States. Only 
a short while since, one of their ablest journals — the " North 
American and United States Gazette," published in Phila- 
delphia — made use of the following language : 

" With slavery in the States, we make no pretence of having any- 
thing politically to do. For better or for worse, the system belongs 
solely to the people of those States ; and is separated by an impass- 
able gulf of State sovereignty from any legal intervention of ours. 
"We cannot vote it down any more than we can vote down the insti- 
tution of caste in Hindostan, or abolish polygamy in the Sultan's 
dominions. Thus, precluded from all political action in reference to 
it, prevented from touching one stone of the edifice, not the slightest 
responsibility attaches to us as citizens for its continued existence. 
But on the question of extending slavery over the free Territories 
of the United States, it is our right, it is our imperative duty to 
think, to feel, to speak and to vote. "We cannot interfere to cover 
the shadows of slavery with the sunshine of freedom, but we can 
interfere to prevent the sunshine of freedom from being eclipsed by 
the shadows of slavery. We can interpose to stay the progress of 
that institution, which aims to drive free labor from its own heritage. 
Kansas should be divided up into countless homes for the ownership 
of men who have a right to the fruit of their own labors. Free 
labor would make it bud and blossom like the rose ; would cover it 
with beauty, and draw from it boundless wealth ; would throng it 
with population; would make States, nations, empires out of it, 
prosperous, powerful, intelligent and free, illustrating on a wide 
theatre the beneficent ends of Providence in the formation of our 



96 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

government, to advance and elevate the millions of our race, and, 
like the heart in the hody, from its central position, sending out 
on every side, far and near, the vital influences of freedom and civi- 
lization. May that region, therefore, he secured to free labor." 

Now we fully and heartily indorse every line of the latter 
part of this extract ; but, with all due deference to our sage 
contemporary, we do most emphatically dissent from the 
sentiments embodied in the first part. Pray, permit us to 
ask — have the people of the North no interest in the United 
States as a nation, and do they not see that slavery is a great 
injury and disgrace to the whole country f Did they not, in 
" the days that tried men's souls," strike as hard blows to 
secure the independence of Georgia as they did in defending 
the liberties of Massachusetts, and is it not notoriously true 
that the Toryism of South Carolina prolonged the war two 
years at least ? Is it not, moreover, equally true that the 
obgarchs of South Carolina have been unmitigated jjests and 
bores to the General Government ever since it was organ- 
ized, and that the free and conscientious people of the North 
are virtually excluded from her soil, in consequence of 
slavery ? It is a well-known and incontestable fact, that the 
Northern States furnished about two-thirds of all the Ameri- 
can troops engaged in the Revolutionary War ; and, though 
they were neither more nor less brave or patriotic than their 
fellow soldiers of the South, yet, inasmuch as the independ- 
ence of our country was mainly secured by virtue of their 
numerical strength, we think they ought to consider it not 
only their right but their duty to make a firm and decisive 
effort to save the States which they fought to free, from fall- 
ing under the yoke of a worse tyranny than that which over- 
shadowed them under the reign of King George the Third. 
Freemen of the North ! we earnestly entreat you to think of 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 97 

these things. Hitherto, as mere freesoilers, you have 
approached but half-way to the hue of your duty ; now, for 
your own sakes and for ours, and for the purpose of perpetu- 
ating this vast and still expanding Republic, which your 
fathers and our fathers founded in septennial streams of blood, 
we ask you, in all seriousness, to organize yourselves as one 
man under the banners of Liberty, and to aid us in exter- 
minating Slavery, which is, beyond all question, the only 
formidable obstacle in the Avay of our complete aggrandize- 
ment as a nation. 

In this extraordinary crisis of affairs, no man can be a true 
patriot without first becoming an abolitionist. (A freesoiler 
is only a tadpole in an advanced stage of transformation ; an 
abolitionist is the full and perfectly developed frog.) And 
here, perhaps, Ave may be pardoned for the digression neces- 
sary to show the exact definition of the terms abolish, aboli- 
tion, abolitionist. We have looked in vain for an explana- 
tion of the signification of these words in any Southern pub- 
lication ; for no dictionary has ever yet been published in the 
South, nor is there the least probability that one ever will be 
published within her borders, until slavery is abolished ; but, 
thanks to Heaven, a portion of this continent is what our 
Revolutionary Fathers, and the Fathers of the Constitution, 
fought and labored and prayed to make it — a land of freedom, 
of power, of progress, of prosperity, of intelligence, of reli- 
gion, of literature, of commerce, of science, of arts, of agri- 
culture, of manufactures, of ingenuity, of enterprise, of wealth, 
of renown, of goodness, and of grandeur. From that glorious 
part of our confederacy — from the North, whence, on account 
of slavery in the South, we are under the humiliating necessity 
of procuring almost everything that is either useful or orna- 
mental, from primers to Bibles, from wafers to printing 
presses, from ladles to locomotives, and from portfolios to 

5 



98 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

portraits and pianos — comes to us a huge volume bearing the 
honored name of Webster — Noah Webster, who, after thirty- 
five years of unremitting toil, completed a work which is, we 
believe, throughout Great Britain and the United States, 
justly regarded as the standard vocabulary of the English 
language — and in it the terms abolish, abolition, and aboli- 
tionist are defined as follows : 

"ABOLisn, v. t. To make void ; to annul; to abrogate; applied 
chiefly and appropriately to established laws, contracts, rites, cus- 
toms and institutions ; as to abolish laws by a repeal, actual or 
virtual. To destroy or put an end to ; as to abolish idols." 

"Abolition, n. The act of abolisbing; or the state of being abo- 
lisbed; an annulling ; abrogation ; utter destruction; as the abolition 
of laws, decrees, ordinances, rites, customs, etc. The putting an 
end to slavery ; emancipation." 

" Abolitionist, n. A person who favors abolition, or the imme- 
diate emancipation of slaves." 

There, gentlemen of the South, you have the definitions of 
the transitive verb abolish, and its two derivative nouns, 
abolition and abolitionist / can you, with the keenest possi- 
ble penetration of vision, detect in either of these words even 
a tittle of the opprobrium which the oligarchs, in their wily 
and inhuman efforts to enslave all working classes irrespective 
of race or color, have endeavored to attach to them ? We 
know you cannot ; abolition is but another name for patri- 
otism, and its other special synonyms are generosity, magna- 
nimity, reason, prudence, wisdom, religion, progress, justice 
and humanity. 

Non-slaveholders of the South! farmers, mechanics and 
workingmen, we take this occasion to assure you that the 
slaveholding politicians whom you have elected to offices of 
honor and profit, have hoodwinked you, trifled with you, and 



FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES. 99 

used you as mere tools for the consummation of their wicked 
designs. They have purposely kept you in ignorance, and 
have, by molding your passions and prejudices to suit them- 
selves, induced you to act in direct opposition to your dearest 
rights and interests. By a system of the grossest subterfuge 
and misrepresentation, and in order to avert, for a season, 
the vengeance that will most assuredly overtake them ere 
long, they have taught you to hate the real lovers of Liberty, 
who are your best and only true friends. Now, as one of 
your own number, we appeal to you to join us in our earnest 
and timely efforts to rescue the generous soil of the South 
from the usurped and desolating control of these political 
vampires. Once and forever, at least so far as this country 
is concerned, the evil-engendering question of slavery must 
be disposed of; a speedy and absolute abolishment of the 
whole system is the true policy of the South — and this is the 
policy which we propose to pursue. Will you aid us, will 
you assist us, will you be freemen, or will you be slaves ? 
These are questions of vital importance ; weigh them well in 
your minds ; come to a prudent and firm decision, and hold 
yourselves in readiness to act in accordance therewith. You 
must either be for us or against us — anti-slavery or pro- 
slavery ; it is impossible for you to occupy a neutral ground ; 
it is as certain as fate itself, that if you do not voluntarily 
oppose the usurpations and outrages of the slavocrats, they 
will force you into involuntary compliance with their infamous 
measures. Consider well the aggressive, fraudulent and 
despotic power which they have exercised in the affairs of 
Kansas ; and remember that, if, by adhering to erroneous 
principles of neutrality or non-resistance, you allow them to 
force the curse of slavery on that or any other vast and fertile 
field, the broad area of all the surrounding States and Terri- 
tories — the whole nation, in fact — will soon fall a prey to 



100 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 

their diabolical intrigues and machinations. Thus, if you are 
not vigilant, will they take advantage of your neutrality, and 
make you and others the victims of their inhuman despotism. 
Do not reserve the strength of your arms until you shall 
have been rendered powerless to strike ; the present is the 
proper time for action ; under all the circumstances, apathy 
or indifference is a crime. First ascertain, as nearly as you 
can, the precise nature and extent of your duty, and then, 
without a moment's delay, perform it in good faith. To 
facilitate you in determining what considerations of right, just- 
ice and humanity require at your hands, is one of the primary 
objects of this work; and we shall certainly fail in our desire 
if we do not accomplish our task in a manner acceptable to 
God and advantageous to man. 

But we are carrying this chapter beyond all ordinary 
bounds ; and yet, there are many important particulars in 
which we have drawn no comparison between the Free 
and Slave States. The more weighty remarks which we 
intended to offer in relation to the new States of the West 
and Southwest, free and slave, shall appear in the succeeding 
chapter. With regard to agriculture, and all the multifarious 
interests of husbandry, Ave deem it quite unnecessary to say 
more. Cotton has been shorn of its magic power, and is no 
longer King ; dried grass, commonly called hay, is, it seems, 
the rightful heir to the throne. Commerce, Manufactures, 
Literature, and other important subjects, shall be considered 
as we progress. 



CHAPTER II. 

HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

Our age, marked by restless activity in almost all departments of knowledge, 
and by struggles and aspirations before unknown, is stamped by no character- 
istic more deeply than by a desire to estabUsh or extend freedom in the politi 

cal societies of mankind There are many persons who pretend to 

admire liberty, but withhold it from the people on the plea that they are not 
prepared for it. Unquestionably, all races are not prepared for the same 
amount of liberty. But two things are certain, that all nations, and especially 
those belonging to our own civilized family, prove that they are prepared for 
the beginning of liberty, by desiring it and insisting upon it, and that yon can- 
not otherwise prepare nations for enjoying liberty than by beginning to estab- 
lish it, as you best prepare nations for a high Christianity by beginning to 
preach it. — Lieber. 

Preliminary to our elucidation of what we conceive to be 
the most discreet, fair and feasible plan for the abolition of 
slavery, we propose to offer a few additional reasons why it 
should be abolished. Among the thousand and one argu- 
ments that present themselves in support of our position — 
which, before We part with the reader, we shall endeavor to 
define so clearly, that it shall be regarded as ultra only by 
those who imperfectly understand it — is the influence which 
slavery invariably exercises in depressing the value of real 
estate ; and as this is a matter in which the non-slaveholders 
of the South, of the West, and of the Southwest, are most 
deeply interested, we shall discuss it in a sort of preamble of 
some length. 

The slaveholding oligarchy say we cannot abolish slavery 
without infringing on the rights of property. Again we tell 

101 



102 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

them we do not recognize property in men ; but even if we 
did, and if Ave were to inventory the negroes at quadruple the 
value of their last assessment, still, impelled by a sense of 
duty to others, and as a matter of simple justice to ourselves, 
we, the non-slaveholders of the South, would be fully war- 
ranted in emancipating all the slaves at once, and that, too, 
without any compensation whatever to those who claim to be 
their absolute masters and owners. We will explain. In 
1850, the average value per acre, of land in the Northern 
States was $28 07; in the Northwestern $11 39; in the 
Southern ; $5 34 ; and in the Southwestern $6 26. Now, in 
consequence of numerous natural advantages, among which 
may be enumerated the greater mildness of climate, richness 
of soil, deposits of precious metals, abundance, and spacious- 
ness of harbors, and superexcellence of water-power, we con- 
tend that had it not been for slavery, the average value of land 
in all the Southern and Southwestern States, would have been 
at least equal to the average value of the same in the North- 
ern States. We conclude, therefore, and we think the con- 
clusion is founded on principles of equity, that you, the slave- 
holders, are indebted to us, the non-slaveholders, in the sum 
of $22 73, which is the difference between $28 07 and $5 34, 
on every acre of Southern soil in our possession. This claim 
we bring against you, because slavery, which has inured ex- 
clusively to your own benefit, if, indeed, it has been beneficial 
at all, has shed a blighting influence over our lands, thereby 
keeping them out of market, and damaging every acre to the 
amount specified. Sirs ! are you ready to settle the account ? 
Let us see how much it is. There are in the fifteen Slave 
States, 346,048 slaveholders, and 544,926,720 acres of land. 
Now the object is to ascertain how many acres are owned by 
slaveholders, and how many by non-slaveholders. Suppose 
we estimate five hundred acres as the average landed pro- 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 103 

perty of each slaveholder ; will that be lair ? We think it 
will, taking into consideration the fact that 174,503 of the 
whole number of slaveholders hold less than five slaves each — 
68,820 holding only one each. According to this hypothesis, 
the slaveholders own 173,024,000 acres, and the non-slave- 
holders the balance, with the exception of about 40,000,000 
of acres which belong to the General Government. The case 
may be stated thus : 

Area of the Slave States 544,926,720 acres. 

( Acres owned by slaveholders 173,024,000 

Estimates-; Acres owned by the government 40,000,000=213,024,0(10 

( Acres owned by non-slaveholders 331,902,720 

Now, chevaliers of the lash, and conservators of slavery, the 
total value of three hundred and thirty-one million nine hun- 
dred and two thousand seven hundred and twenty acres, at 
tAventy-two dollars and seventy-three cents per acre, is seven 
billion Jive hundred and forty-four million one hundred and 
forty-eight thousand eight hundred and twenty-five dollars; 
and this is our account against you on a single score. Consi- 
dering how your pernicious institution has retarded the deve- 
lopment of our commercial and manivfacturing interests, how it 
has stifled the aspirations of inventive genius ; and, above all, 
how it has barred from us the heaven-born sweets of literature 
and religion — concernments too sacred to be estimated in a pe- 
cuniary point of view — might we not, with perfect justice and 
propriety, duplicate the amount, and still be accounted modest 
in our demands ? Fully advised, however, of your indigent 
circumstances, we feel it would be utterly useless to call on 
you for the whole amount that is due us ; we shall, therefore, 
in your behalf, make another draft on the fund of non-slave- 
holding generosity, and let the account, meagre as it is, stand 
as above. Though we have given you all the offices, and you 
have given us none of the benefits of legislation ; though we 
have fought the battles of the South, while you were either 



104 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

lolling in your piazzas, or in active fellowship with the enemy, 
endeavoring to filch from us our birthright of freedom ; 
though you have absorbed the wealth of our communities in 
sending your own children to Northern seminaries and col- 
leges, or in employing Yankee teachers to officiate exclusively 
in your own families, and have refused to us the limited pri- 
vilege of common schools; though you have scorned to 
patronize our mechanics and industrial enterprises, and have 
passed to the North for every article of apparel, utility, and 
adornment ; and though you have maltreated, outraged and 
defrauded us in every relation of fife, civil, social, and politi- 
cal, yet we are willing to forgive and forget you, if you will 
but do us justice on a single count. Of you, the introducers, 
aiders and abettors of slavery, Ave demand indemnification for 
the damage our lands have sustained on account thereof; the 
amount of that damage is 87,544,148,825 ; and now, sirs, we are 
ready to receive the money, and if it is perfectly convenient to 
you, we would be glad to have you pay it at once, in specie ! 
It will not avail you, sirs, to parley or prevaricate. We must 
have a settlement. Our claim is just and overdue. We have 
already indulged you too long. Your reckless extravagance 
has almost ruined us. We are determined that you shall no 
longer play the profligate, and fare sumptuously every day at 
our expense. How do you propose to settle ? Do you offer 
us your negroes in part payment ? We do not want your 
negroes. We would not have all of them, nor any number 
of them, even as a gift. We hold ourselves above the disre- 
putable and iniquitous practices of buying, selling, and owning 
slaves. What we demand is damages in money, or other ab- 
solute property, as an equivalent for the pecuniary losses we 
have suffered at your hands. You value your negroes at six- 
teen hundred millions of dollars, and propose to sell them to 
us for that sum ; we should consider ourselves badly cheated, 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 105 

and disgraced for all time, here and hereafter, if we were to 
take them off your hands at sixteen farthings ! We tell you 
emphatically, we are firmly resolved never to degrade our- 
selves by becoming the mercenary purchasers or proprietors 
of human beings. Except for the purpose of liberating them, 
we would not give a handkerchief or a tooth -pick for all the 
slaves in the world. But, in order to show how ridiculously 
absurd are the howls and groans which you invariably set up 
for compensation, whenever we speak of the abolition of 
slavery, we will suppose your negroes are worth all you ask 
for them, and that we are bound to secure to you every cent 
of the sum before they can become free — in which case, our 
accounts would stand thus : 

Non-slaveholders' account against Slaveholders $7,544,148,825 

Slaveholders' account against Non-slaveholders 1,600,000,000 

Balance due Non-slaveholders $5,944,148,825 

Now, sirs, we ask you in all seriousness, is it not apparent 
that you have thus filched from us nearly five times the 
amount of the assessed value of your slaves ? Why, then, do 
you still clamor for more ? Is it your purpose to make the 
game perpetual ? Think you that we will ever continue to 
bow at the wave of your wand, that we will bring humanity 
into everlasting disgrace by licking the hand that smites us, 
and that with us there is no point beyond which forbearance 
ceases to be a virtue ? Sirs, if these be your thoughts, you 
are laboring under a most fatal delusion. You can goad us 
no further ; you shall oppress us no longer ; heretofore, ear- 
nestly but submissively, we have asked you to redress the 
more atrocious outrages which you have perpetrated against 
us; but what has been the invariable fate of our petitions? 
With scarcely a perusal, with a degree of contempt that added 
insult to injury, you have laid them on the table, and from 

5* 



106 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

thence they have been swept into the furnace of oblivion. 
Henceforth, sirs, we are demandants, not suppliants. "We 
demand our rights — nothing more — nothing less. It is for 
you to decide whether Ave are to have justice peaceably or by 
positive compulsion, for whatever consequences may follow, 
we are determined to have it one way or the other. 

Do you aspire to become the victims of white non-slave- 
holding vengeance by day, and of barbarous massacre by the 
negroes at night? "Would you be instrumental- in "bringing 
upon yourselves, your wives, and your children, a fate too 
horrible to contemplate ? Shall history cease to cite as an 
instance of unexampled cruelty, the Massacre of St. Bartho- 
lomew, because the world — the South — shall have furnished a 
more direful scene of atrocity and carnage ? Sirs, we would 
not wantonly pluck a single hair from your heads ; but we 
have endured long, we have endured much ; slaves only of 
the most despicable class would endure more. An enumera- 
tion or classification of all the abuses, insults, wrongs, injuries, 
usurpations, and oppressions, to which you have subjected us, 
would fill countless volumes larger than this ; it is our purpose, 
therefore, to speak only of those that affect us most deeply. 
Out of our effects you have long since overpaid yourselves for 
your negroes ; and now, sirs, you must emancipate them — 
speedily emancipate them, or wc will emancipate them for 
you ! 

Slavery has most shamefully polluted and impoverished your 
lands ; freedom will restore them to their virgin purity, and 
add from twenty to thirty dollars to the value of every acre. 
Correctly speaking, emancipation will cost you nothing ; the 
moment you abolish slavery, that very moment will the puta- 
tive value of the slave become actual value in the soil. Though 
there are ten millions of people in the South, and though you, the 
slaveholders, are only three hundred and forty-seven thousand 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 107 

in number; you have within a fraction of one-third of all the 
territory belonging to the fifteen Slave States. You have a 
landed estate of 173,024,000 acres, the present average mar- 
ket value of which is only $5 34 per acre ; emancipate your 
slaves on Wednesday morning, and on the Thursday follow- 
ing the value of your lands, and ours too, will have increased 
to an average of at least $28 07 per acre. Let us see, there- 
fore, even in this one particular, whether the abolition of 
slavery w T ould not be a real pecuniary advantage to you. 
The present total market value of all your landed property, at 
$5 34 per acre, is only $923,248,160. With the beauty and 
sunlight of freedom beaming on the same estate, it would be 
worth, at $28 07 per acre, $4,856,873,680 ! The former sum 
deducted from the latter, leaves a balance of $3,933,625,520, 
and to the full extent of this amount will your lands be in- 
creased in value whenever you abolish slavery ; that is, pi*o- 
vided you are wise enough to abolish it before it completely 
" dries up all the organs of increase." Here is a more mani- 
fest and distinct statement of the case : 

Estimated value of Slaveholders' lands after slavery shall have | » . »,, » S o eon 

been abolished j * ' ' ' 

Present value of Slaveholders' lands 923,248,160 

Probable aggregate enhancement of value $3,933,625,520 

Now, sirs, this last sum is considerably more than twice as 
great as the estimated value of all your negroes ; and those of 
you, if any there be, who are yet heirs to sane minds and 
generous hearts, must, it seems to us, admit that the bright 
prospect which freedom presents for a wonderful increase in 
the value of real estate, ours as well as yours, to say nothing 
of the thousand other kindred considerations, ought to be 
quite sufficient to induce all the Southern States, in their 
sovereign capacities, to abolish slavery at the earliest practi- 
cable period. You yourselves, instead of losing anything by 



108 



HOW SLAVEJRY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 



the emancipation of your negroes — even though we suppose 
them to be worth every dime of $1,600,000,000, would in this 
one particular, the increased value of land, realize a net profit 
of over twenty-three hundred million of dollars. Here are 
the exact figures : 



Net increment of value which it is estimated will accrue to 1 

slaveholders' lands in consequence of the abolition of v $3,933,625,520 
slavery j 

Putative value of the slaves 1,600,000,000 



Slaveholders' estimated net landed profits of emancipation $2,333,625,520 

What is the import of these figures ? They are full of 
meaning. They proclaim themselves the financial intercessors 
for Freedom, and with that open-hearted liberality which is 
so characteristic of the sacred cause in whose behalf they 
plead, they propose to pay you upward of three thousand 
nine hundred-million of dollars for the very "property " which 
you, in all the extravagance of your uncliastened avarice, 
could not find a heart to price at more than one thousand six 
hundred million. In other words, your own lands, groaning 
and languishing under the monstrous burden of Slavery, an- 
nounce their willingness to pay you all you ask for the negroes, 
and offer you, besides, a bonus of more than twenty-three 
hundred million of dollars, if you will but convert those lands 
into free soil ! Our lands, also, cry aloud to be spared from 
the further pollutions and desolations of slavery ; and now, 
sirs, we want to know explicitly whether, or not, it is your 
intention to heed these lamentations of the ground ? We, 
the non-slaveholders of the South, have many very important 
interests at stake — interests which, heretofore, you have stea- 
dily despised and trampled under foot, but which, henceforth, 
we shall foster and defend in utter defiance of all the unhallowed 
influences which it is possible for you, or any other class of 
slaveholders or slavebreeders to bring against us. Not the 



HOW SLAVEEY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 109 

least among these interests is our landed property, which, to 
command a decent price, only needs to be disincumbered of 
Slavery. 

In Ins present condition, we believe, man exercises one of 
the noblest virtues with which heaven has endoAved him, when 
without taking any undue advantage of his fellow-men, and 
with a firm, unwavering purpose to confine his expenditures 
to the legitimate pursuits and pleasures of life, he covets money 
and strives to accumulate it. Entertaining this view, and 
having no disposition to make an improper use of money, we 
are free to confess that we have a greater penchant for twen- 
ty-eight dollars than for five; for ninety than for fifteen ; for 
a thousand than for one hundred. South of Mason and 
Dixon's line we, the non-slaveholders, have 331,902,720 acres 
of land, the present average market value of which, as pre- 
viously stated, is only $5 34 per acre ; by abolishing slavery 
we expect to enhance the value to an average of at least $28 
07 per acre, and thus realize an average net increase of wealth 
of more than seventy-Jive hundred million of dollars. The 
hope of realizing smaller sums has frequently induced men to 
perpetrate acts of injustice ; we can see no reason why the 
certainty of becoming immensely rich in real estate, or other 
property, should make us falter in the performance of a sacred 
duty. 

As illustrative of our theme, a bit of personal history may 
not be out of place in this connection. Only a little while 
has elapsed since Ave sold to an elder brother an interest we 
held in an old homestead which was willed to us many years 
ago by our deceased father. The tract of land, containing two 
hundred acres, or thereabouts, is situated two and a hall 
miles west of Mocksville, the capital of Davie Count \, North 
Carolina, and is very nearly equally divided by Bear Creek) 
a small tributary of the South Yadkin. More than one-third 



110 HOW SLAVED Y CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

of this tract — on which we have ploughed and hoed, and har- 
rowed, many a long summer without ever suffering from the 
effects of coup de soleil — is under cultivation ; the remaining 
portion is a well-timbered forest, in which, without being very 
particular, we counted, while hunting through it not long 
since, sixty-three different kinds of indigenous trees — to say 
nothing of either coppice, shrubs or plants — among which the 
hickory, oak, ash, beech, birch, and black walnut, Avere most 
abundant. No turpentine or rosin is produced in our part of 
the State ; but there are, on the place of which we speak, 
several species of the genus Pinus, by the light of whose flam- 
mable knots, as radiated on the contents of some half dozen 
old books which, by hook or by crook, had found their way 
into the neighborhood, we have been enabled to turn the long- 
winter evenings to some advantage, and have thus partially 
escaped from the prison-grounds of those loathsome dungeons 
of illiteracy in which it has been the constant policy of the 
oligarchy to keep the masses, the non-slaveholding whites and 
the negroes, forever confined. The fertility of the soil may 
be inferred from the quality and variety of its natural produc- 
tions ; the meadow and the bottom, comprising, perhaps, an 
area of forty acres, are hardly surpassed by the best lands in 
the valley of the Yadkin. A thorough examination of the 
orchard will disclose the fact that considerable attention lias 
been paid to the selection of fruits ; the buildings are tole- 
rable ; the water is good. Altogether, to be frank, and 
nothing more, it is, for its size, one of the most desirable 
farms in the county, and will at any time, command the 
maximum price of land in Western Carolina. Our brother, 
anxious to become the sole proprietor, readily agreed to give 
us the highest market price, which we shall publish by and 
Wy. While reading the " Baltimore Sun," the morning after 
we had made the sale, our attention was allured to a para- 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. HI 

graph headed " Sales of Real Estate," from which, among 
other significant items, we learned that a tract of land con- 
taining exactly two hundred acres, and occupying a portion 
of one of the rural districts in the southeastern part of Penn- 
sylvania, near the Maryland line, had been sold the week be- 
fore, at one hundred and Jive dollars and fifty cents per acre. 
Judging from the succinct account given in the " Sun," we 
are of the opinion that, with regard to fertility of soil, the 
Pennsylvania tract always has been, is now, and perhaps al- 
ways will be, rather inferior to the one under special conside- 
ration. One is of the same size as the other ; both are used 
for agricultural purposes; in aU probability the only essential 
difference between them is this : one is blessed with the pure 
air of freedom, the other is cursed with the malaria of slavery. 
For our interest in the old homestead we received a nominal 
sum, amounting to an average of precisely five dollars and 
sixty cents per acre. No one but our brother, who was keen 
for the purchase, would have given us quite so much. 

And now, pray let us ask, what does this narrative teach ? 
"We shall use few words in explanation ; there is an extensive 
void, but it can be better filled with reflection. The aggre- 
gate value of the one tract is $21,100; that of the other is 
only $1,120 ; the difference is $19,980. We contend, therefore, 
in view of all the circumstances detailed, that the advocates 
and retainers of slavery, have, in effect, defrauded our family 
out of this last-mentioned sum. In like manner, and on the 
same basis of deduction, we contend that almost every non- 
slaveholder, who either is or has been the owner of real estate 
hi the South, would in a court of strict justice, be entitled to 
damages — the amount in all cases to be determined with refe- 
rence to the quality of the land in question. We say this, 
because in violation of every principle of expediency, justice, 
and humanity, and in direct opposition to our solemn pro- 



112 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

tests, slavery was foisted upon us, and has been thus far per- ' 
petuated by and through the wily intrigues of the oligarchy, 
and by them alone ; and furthermore, because the very best 
agricultural lands in the Northern States being worth from 
one hundred to one hundred and seventy-five dollars per 
acre, there is no possible reason, except slavery, why the 
more fertile and congenial soil of the South should not be 
worth at least as much. If, on this principle, we could ascer- 
tain, in the matter of real estate, the total indebtedness of 
the slaveholders to the non-slaveholders, we should doubtless 
find the sum quite equivalent to the amount estimated on a 
preceding page— $7,544,148,825. 

We have recently conversed with two gentlemen who, to 
save themselves from the poverty and disgrace of slavery, 
left North Carolina six or seven years ago, and who are 
now residing in the State of Minnesota, where they have 
accumulated handsome fortunes. One of them had travelled 
extensively in Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and other 
adjoining States ; and, according to his account, and we 
know him to be a man of veracity, it is almost impossible 
for persons at a distance, to form a proper conception of the 
magnitude of the difference between the current value of 
lands in the Free and in the Slave States of the West. On 
one occasion, embarking at Wheeling, he sailed down the 
Ohio ; Virginia and Kentucky on the one side, Ohio and Indiana 
on the other. He stopped at several places along the river, 
first on the right bank, then on the left, and so on, until he 
arrived at Evansville ; continuing his trip, he sailed down to 
Cairo, thence up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Des 
Moines; having tarried at different points along the route, 
sometimes in Missouri, sometimes in Illinois. Wherever he 
landed on free soil, he found it from one to two hundred per 
cent, more valuable than the slave soil on the opposite bank. 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 113 

If, for instance, the maximum price of land was eight dollars 
in Kentucky, the minimum price was sixteen in Ohio ; if it 
was seven dollars in Missouri, it was fourteen in Illinois. 
Furthermore, he assured us, that, so far as he could Learn, 
two years ago, when he travelled through the States of 
which we speak, the range of prices of agricultural lands, in 
Kentucky, was from three to eight dollars per acre ; in Ohio, 
from sixteen to forty ; in Missouri, from two to seven ; in 
Illinois, from fourteen to thirty ; in Arkansas, from one to 
four; in Iowa, from six to fifteen. 

In all the old Slave States, as is well known, there are vast 
bodies of land that can be bought for the merest trifle. We 
know an enterprising capitalist in Philadelphia, who owns in 
his individual name, in the State of Virginia, one hundred 
and thirty thousand acres, for which he paid only thirty- 
seven and a half cents per acre ! Some years ago, in certain 
parts of North Carolina, several large tracts were purchased 
at the rate of twenty-five cents per acre ! 

Hiram Berdan, the distinguished inventor, w r ho has fre- 
quently seen Freedom and Slavery side by side, and who is, 
therefore, well qualified to form an opinion of their relative 
influence upon society, says : 

" Many comparisons might be drawn between the Free and the 
Slave States, either of which should be sufficient to satisfy any man 
that slavery is not only ruinous to free labor and enterprise, but 
injurious to morals, and blighting to the soil where it exists. The 
comparison between the States of Michigan and Arkansas, which 
were admitted into the Union at the same time, will fairly illustrate 
the difference and value of free and slave labor, as well as the differ- 
ence of moral and intellectual progress in a Free and in a Slave State. 

"In 1836, those young Stars were admitted into the constellation 
of the Union. Michigan, with one-half the extent of territory of 
Arkansas, challenged her sister State for a twenty years' race, and 



114 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

named as her rider, ' Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude, 
unless for the punishment of crime, shall ever he tolerated in this 
State.' Arkansas accepted the challenge, and named as her rider, 
' The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the 
emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners.' Thus 
mounted, these two States, the one free and the other slave, started 
together twenty years ago, and now, having arrived at the end of 
the proposed race, let us review and mark the progress of each. 
Michigan comes out in 1856 with three times the population of slave 
Arkansas, with five times the assessed value of farms, farming imple- 
ments and machinery, and with eight times the number of public 
schools." 

In the foregoing part of our work, we have drawn com- 
parisons between the old Free States and the old Slave 
States, and between the new Free States and the new Slave 
States ; had we sufficient time and space, we might with the 
most significant results, change this method of comparison, 
by contrasting the new Free States with the old Slave States. 
Can the slavery-extensionists compare Ohio with Virginia, 
Illinois with Georgia, or Indiana with South Carolina, with- 
out experiencing the agony of inexpressible shame ? If 
they can, then indeed has slavery debased them to a lower 
deep than we care to contemplate. 

We shall now introduce two tables of valuable and inte- 
resting statistics, to which philosophic and discriminating 
readers will doubtless have frequent occasions to refer. 
Table 11 will show the area of the several States, in square 
miles and in acres, and the number of inhabitants to the 
square mile in each State ; also the grand total, or the ave- 
rage, of every statistical column; Table 12 wiE exhibit the 
total number of inhabitants residing in each State, according 
to the census of 1850, the number of whites, the number of 
free colored, and the number of slaves. The recapitulations 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 



115 



of these tables will be followed by a complete list of the 
number of slaveholders in the United States, shoAving the 
exact number in each Southern State, and in the District of 
Columbia. Most warmly do we commend all these statistics 
to the studious attention of the reader. Their language is 
more eloquent than any possible combination of Roman 
vowels and consonants. We have spared no pains in arrang- 
ing them so as to express at a single glance the great truths 
of which they are composed ; and we doubt not that the 
plan we have adopted will meet with general approbation. 
Numerically considered, it will be perceived that the slave- 
holders are, in reality, a very insignificant class. Of them, 
however, we shall have more to say hereafter. 

TABLE 11. 
AREA OF THE FREE AND OF THE SLAVE STATES. 



AREA OP THE FREE STATES. 


AREA OP THE SLAVE STATES. 


STATES, 


Square 
miles. 


Acres. 


Inhabi- 
tants to 
sq. mile. 


STATES. 


Square 
miles. 


Acres. 


Inhabi- 
tants to 
sq. mile. 


California, . . . 
Connecticut, . 

Michigan, .. . 
N. Hampshire 
New Jersey,. . 
New York,. . . 

Ohio, 

Pennsylvania 
Rhode Island, 

Vermont, 

Wisconsin, .. 


155.9S0 

4,674 

55,405 

33,809 

50,914 

31,766 

7,800 

56,243 

9,280 

8,320 

47,000 

39,964 

46,000 

1,306 

10,212 

53,924 


99,827,200 

2,991,360 

35,359,200 

21,637,760 

32,584,960 

20,330,240 

4,992,000 

35,995,520 

5,939,200 

5,324,800 

30,080,000 

26,576,960 

29,440,000 

835,840 

6,535,680 

34,511,860 


.59 
79.33 
15.37 
29.24 

3.78 
18.36 
127.50 

7.07 
34.26 
58.84 
65.90 
49.55 
50.26 
112.97 
30.76 

5.66 


Alabama,.. . 
Arkansas, . . 
Delaware,.. . 

Florida, 

Georgia,. . . . 
Kentucky, . . 
Louisiana, . . 
Maryland, . . 
Mississippi,.. 
Missouri, ... 
N. Carolina, 
S. Carolina, . 
Tennessee,.. 

Texas, 

Virginia, . . . 


50,722 
52,198 
2,120 
59,268 
5S,000 
37,680 
41,255 
11,124 
47,156 
67,380 
50,704 
29,385 
46,600 
237,504 
61,352 


32,027,490 
33,406,720 

1,356,800 
37,931,520 
37,120,000 
24,115,200 
26,403,200 

7,119,360 
30,179,840 
43,123,200 
32,450,560 
ls,si)5,400 
29,184,000 
152,002,560 
89,165,280 


15.21 
4.02 
43. IS 
1.48 
15.62 
26.07 
12.55 
52.41 
12.86 
10.12 
17.14 
22.76 
21.99 
.89 
23.17 




612,597 1892,962,080 1 21.91 


851,448 |544,391,130 1 11.29 



RECAPITULATION— AREA. 

Area of the Slave States, 861,448 square miles. 

Area of the Free States, 612,597 " 

Balances in favor of Slave States,. . 238,851 " 



544,926,720 acres. 
892,062,082 " 



152,864,633 



116 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 



TABLE 13. 
POPULATION OF THE FREE AND OF THE SLAVE STATES— 1850. 





POPULATION 






POPULATION' 




OF THE 


FKEE STATES— 


1S50. 


OF THE SLAVE STATES — 1850. 


STATES. 


Whiles. 


Free 
Col'd 


Total. 


STATES. 


Whites. 


Free 
Col'd. 


Slaves. 


Total. 


California,.. 


91,635 


902 


92,597 


Alabama, . . 


420,514 


2,265 


342,844 


771,023 


Connecticut 


303,099 


7,093 


370,792 


Arkansas,... 


102,189 


608 


47.1110 


209,897 


Illinois, 


846,034 


5,430 


851,470 


Delaware,.. 


71,169 


18,073 


2,290 


91,532 


Indiana,. .. 


977,154 


11,202 


988,416 


Florida, 


47,203 


932 


39,310 


87,445 




191,881 


333 


192,214 


Georgia, . . . 


521,572 


2,931 


881,622 


900,135 




581,818 


1,350 


583,169 


Kentucky,.. 


701,413 


10,011 


210,981 


9S2,405 


Mass 


9s.->,450 


9,004 


994,514' 


Louisiana,.. 


255,491 


17,402 


244,809 


517,702 


Michigan,... 


895,071 


2,583 


397,054 


Maryland,. . 


417,943 


74.723 


90,868 


588,084 


N. Hamp.,.. 


317,45(3 


520 


317,970 


Mississippi,. 


295,718 


930 


809,878 


606,526 


N. Jersey,.. 


4f.5,5iKI 


23,810 


4.89,319 


Missouri,. .. 


592,004 


2,618 


87,422 


682,044 


New York,.. 


3,048,325 


49,069 


3,097,394 


N. Carolina, 


558,028 


27,463 


288,548 


B69,089 


Ohio, 


1,955,050 


25,279 


1,9S0,329 


S. Carolina, 


274,563 


8,900 


884,984 


668,507 


Penn., . ... 


2,258,160 


58,626 


2,311,780 


Tennessee, . 


756,886 


6,422 


289,4591,002,717 


Rhode Is.,.. 


1 t:;,s75 


3,070 
71 S 


147,545 


Texas, 


154,084 


397 


58,161 


212,592 


Vermont, . . 


313,40-2 


314,120 


Virginia, . . 


894,800 


54,333 


472,528 1,421,001 


"Wisconsin,.. 


804,750 


535 


305,291 














13,208,070195,910 


13,404,586 

1 


6,184,477 


228,128 


3,200,304 9,612,909 



RECAPITULATION— POPULATION— 1850. 

Whites. 



Population of the Free States, 13,268,670 

Population of the Slave States, 6,184,477 



Balances in favor of the Free States, 7,084,193 3,S51,677 



FREE COLORED AND SLAVE— 1S50. 

Free Negroes in the Slave States, 228,188 

Free Negroes in the Free States, 1:h;. 1 1 

Excess of Free Negroes in the Slave States, 32,022 

Slaves in the Slave States, 3,200,364 

Free Negroes in the Slave States, 228,133 

Aggregate Negro Population of the Slave States in 1850 8,428,502 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 117 



THE TERRITORIES AND THE DISTRICT OP COLUMBIA. 

Area in Square Miles. Population 

Indian Territory, 71,127 

Kansas " 114,798 

Minnesota " 166,025 , . . . 6 077 

Nebraska " 335,S82 

N. Mexico " 207,007 61 547 

Oregon " 185,030 13 294 

Utah " 269,170 ll'sso 

Washington " 123,022 

Columbia, Dist. of, 60 *51 6S7 



Aggregate of Area and Population, 1,472,121 143 0S5 



NUMBER OF SLAVEHOLDERS IN THE UNITED STATES— 1S50. 

Alabama, 29 295 

Arkansas, 5999 

Columbia, District of, ' 1477 

Delaware, 'g09 

Florida, .. 3 ,V2H 

Georgia, S8,456 

Kentucky, 88,885 

Louisiana,... 20 670 

Maryland, '["' lo'o40 

Mississippi, 23 1 10 

Missouri, 19,'l85 

North Carolina, 28 308 

South Carolina, ' 25*596 

Tennessee, " 83,864 

Texas 7,747 

Virginia, 55^063 

Total number of Slaveholders in the United States, 347,525 



CLASSIFICATION OF SLAVEHOLDERS— 1850. 

Holders of 1 slave, 68,820 

Holders of 1 and under 5, . ] 05,683 

Holders of 5 and under 10, 80,765 

Holders of 10 and under 20, 54,595 

Holders of 20 and under 50, 29;783 

Holders of 50 and under 100, 6.196 

Holders of 100 and under 200, 1 479 

Holders of 200 and under 300, 'it;7 

Holders of 300 and under 500, 56 

Holders of 500 and underl,000, 9 

Holders of 1,000 and over, 2 

Aggregate number of Slaveholders in the United States, 347,525 



* Of the 51.6S7 inhabitants in the District of Columbia, in 1850, 10,057 were Free Colored 
and 3,687 were Slaves. 



118 HOW 6L AVERT CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

It thus appears that there are in the United Sates, three 
hundred and forty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty- 
five slaveholders. But this appearance is deceptive. The 
actual number is certainly less than two hundred thousand. 
Professor De Bow, the Superintendent of the Census, informs 
us that "the number includes slave-hirers," and furthermore, 
that " where the party owns slaves in different counties, or in 
•different States, he will be entered more than once." Now 
every Southerner, who has any practical knowledge of 
affairs, must know, and does know, that every New Year's 
day, like almost every other day, is desecrated in the South, 
by publicly hiring out slaves to large numbers of non-slave- 
holders. The slave-owners, who are the exclusive manufac- 
turers of public sentiment, have pojmlarized the dictum that 
white servants are unfashionable ; and there are, we are sorry 
to say, nearly one hundred and sixty thousand non-slavehold- 
ing sycophants, who have subscribed to this false philosophy, 
and who are giving constant encouragement to the infamous 
practices of slaveholding and slave-breeding, by hiring at 
least one slave every year. 

In the Southern States, as in all other slaveholding coun- 
tries, there are three odious classes of mankind ; the slaves 
themselves, who are cowards ; the slaveholders, Avho arc 
tyrants ; and the non-slaveholding slave-hirers, who are lick- 
spittles. Whether either class is really entitled to the gentle 
regards of any respectable man or woman in the world, is, 
indeed, a matter of grave doubt. The slaves, because of their 
timidity and mean submission, are abominable ; the slave- 
holders, because of their unjust and cruel exercise of power, 
are detestable ; the non-slaveholding slave-hirers, because of 
their unmanly endurance of usurpation and wrong on the part 
of the domineering moguls of unrighteousness, are contemp- 
tible ; — and to a right-thinking public we submit the question, 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 119 

whether, with one grand concerted kick from all the decent 
peoples of Christendom, every member of these three odious 
classes of mankind should not, as the just penalty of their 
demerits, be at once hurled headlong from the fair face of the 
earth into an abyss of oblivion ! 

With the statistics at our command, it is impossible for us 
to ascertain the exact number of slaveholders and non-slave- 
holding slave-hirers in the Slave States ; but Ave have data 
which will enable us to approach very near to the facts. The 
town from which Ave hail, Salisbury, the capital of Rowan 
County, North Carolina, contains about twenty-three hundred 
inhabitants, including three hundred and seventy-tAVO slaA r es, 
fifty one slaveholders, and forty-three non-slaveholding slave- 
hirers. Taking it for granted that this town furnishes a fair 
relative proportion of all the slaveholding and non-slaA T ehold- 
ing skive-hirers in the SlaA T e States, the whole number of the 
former, including those Avho have been " entered more than 
once," is one hundred and eighty-eight thousand five hundred 
and fifty-one ; of the latter, one hundred and fifty-eight thou- 
sand nine hundred and seventy-four ; and, iioav, estimating 
that there are in Maryland, Virginia, and other grain-groAving 
States, an aggregate of tAVO thousand slave-OAvners, Avho have 
cotton plantations stocked with negroes in the far South, and 
Avho have been " entered more than once," we find, as the 
result of our calculations, that the total number of actual 
slaveholders in the Union, is precisely one hundred and 
eighty-six thousand five hundred and fifty one— as follows : 

Number of actual slaveholders in the United States 186,551 

Number " entered more than once" .... 2,000 

Number of non-slaveholding slave-hirers 158,974 

Aggregate number, according to De Bow 347,525 

The greater number of non-slaveholding slave-hirers, are a 
kind of third-rate aristocrats — persons who formerly owned 



120 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

slaves, but whom slavery, as is its custom, has dragged down 
to poverty, leaving them in their false and shiftless pride, to 
eke out a miserable existence over the hapless chattels per- 
sonal of other men. 

So it seems that the total number of actual slaveowners 
including their entire crew of white non-slaveholding syco- 
phants, against whom we have to contend, is but three hun- 
dred and forty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-five. 
Against this army for the defence and propagation of slavery, 
we think it would be an easy matter — independent of every 
negro in the world, whether bond or free, and Avithout accept- 
ing of a single recruit from any one of the Free States, or from 
England, France, or Germany — to muster one at least three 
times as large, and far more respectable, for its utter extinc- 
tion. We hope, however, and believe, that the matter in 
dispute may be adjusted without arraying these armies against 
each other in hostile attitude. We desire peace, not war — 
justice, not blood. Give us fair-play, secure to us the right 
of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the 
difficulty at the ballot-box, not on the battle-ground ; by force 
of reason, not by force of arms. But Ave are wedded to one 
purpose from which no earthly power can ever divorce us. 
We are determined to abolish slavery at all hazards — in defi- 
ance of all the opposition, of whatever nature, which it is possi- 
ble for the propagandists of the system to bring against us. Of 
this they may now take due notice, and govern themselves 
accordingly. 

Before Ave proceed further, it may be necessary to call 
attention to the fact that, though the ostensible proprietor- 
ship of the slaves is vested in feAvcr individuals than Ave have 
usually counted in our calculations concerning them, the force 
and drift of our statistics remain unimpaired. In the main, 
all our figures are correct. The tables which Ave have pre 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 121 

pared, especially, and the recapitulations of those tables, maybe 
relied on with all the confidence that is due to American official 
integrity ; for, as we have substantially remarked on a pre- 
vious occasion, the particulars of which they are composed 
have been obtained from the returns of competent census 
agents, who, with Prof. De Bow as principal, Avere expressly 
employed to collect them. As for our minor labors in the 
science of numbers, we cheerfully submit them to the candid 
scrutiny of the impartial critic. 

Thus far in giving expression to our sincere and settled 
opinions, we have endeavored to show, in the first place, that 
slavery is a great moral, social, civil, and political evil — a dire 
enemy to true wealth and national greatness, and an atrocious 
crime against both God and man ; and, in the second place, 
that it is a paramount duty which we owe to heaven, to the 
earth, to America, to humanity, to our posterity, to our con- 
sciences, and to our pockets, to adopt effectual and judicious 
measures for its immediate suppression. The questions now 
arise, How can the evil be averted ? What are the most 
prudent and practicable means that can be devised for the 
abolition of slavery ? In the solution of these problems it 
becomes necessary to deal with a multiplicity of stubborn 
realities. And yet we can see no reason why North Carolina, 
in her sovereign capacity, may not with equal ease and suc- 
cess, do what forty-five other States of the world have done 
within the last forty-five years. Nor do we believe any good 
reason exists why Virginia should not perform as great a deed 
in 1869 as did New York in 1799. Massachusetts abolished. 
slavery in 1780 ; would it not be a masterly stroke of policy 
in Tennessee, and every other Slave State, to abolish it in or 
before 1870? 

To the non-slaveholding whites of the South, as a deeply- 
wronged and vitally distinct political party, we must look for 

6 



122 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

that change of law, or reorganization of society, which, at an 
early day, we hope, is to result in the substitution of liberty 
for slavery ; and under all the circumstances, it now becomes 
their duty to mark out an independent course for themselves 
and to utterly contemn and ignore the many base instruments 
of power, animate and inanimate, which have been so freely 
and so effectually used for their enslavement. Steering en- 
tirely clear of the oligarchy, noAv is the time for the non-slave- 
holders to assert their rights and liberties ; never before was 
there such an appropriate period to strike for Freedom in 
the South. 

Had it not been for the better sense, the purer patriotism, 
and the more practical justice of the non-slaveholders, the 
Middle States and New England would still be groaning and 
grovelhng under the ponderous burden of slavery ; New York 
would never have risen above the dishonorable level of Vir- 
ginia ; Pennsylvania, trampled beneath the iron heel of the 
black code, would have remained the unprogressive parallel 
of Georgia ; Massachusetts would have continued till the pre- 
sent time, and Heaven only knows how much longer, the con- 
temptible coequal of South Carolina. 

Succeeded by the happiest moral effects and the grandest 
physical results, we have seen slavery crushed beneath the 
wisdom of the non-slaveholding statesmen of the North ; fol- 
lowed by corresponding influences and achievements, many 
of us who have not yet passed the meridian of life, are destined 
to see it equally crushed beneath the Avisdom of the non- 
slaveholding statesmen of the South. With righteous indig- 
nation, we enter our protest against the base yet baseless ad- 
mission that Louisiana and Texas are incapable of producing 
as great statesmen as Rhode Island and Connecticut. What 
has been done for New Jersey by the statesmen of New Jer- 
sey, can be done for Kentucky by the statesmen of Kentucky ; 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 123 

the wisdom of the former State has abolished slavery ; as sure 
as the earth revolves on its axis, the Avisdom of the latter will 
not do less. 

That our plan for the abolition' of slavery is the best that 
can be devised, we have not the vanity to contend ; but that 
it is a good one, and will do to act upon until a better shall 
have been suggested, we do firmly and conscientiously be- 
lieve. Though but little skilled in the delicate art of surgery, 
Ave have pretty thoroughly probed Slavery, the frightful tu- 
mor on the body politic, and have, Ave think, ascertained the 
precise remedies requisite for a speedy and perfect cure. 
Possibly the less ardent friends of Freedom may object to 
our prescription, on the ground that some of its ingredients 
are too griping, and that it AAdll cost the patient a deal of 
most excruciating pain. But let them remember that the 
patient is exceedingly refractory, that the case is a desperate 
one, and that drastic remedies are indispensably necessary. 
When they shall have discovered milder yet equally effica- 
cious ones, it Avill be time enough to discontinue the use of 
oui-s — then no one will be readier than Ave to discard the in- 
fallible strong recipe for the infallible mild. Not at the per- 
secution of a few thousand slaveholders, but at the restitulion 
of natural rights and prerogatives to seA-eral million of non- 
slaveholders, do we aim. 

Inscribed on the banner, Avhich Ave hereAvith unfurl to the 
world, Avith the full and fixed determination to stand by it or 
die by it, unless one of more A y irtuous efficacy shall be pre- 
sented, are the mottoes which, in substance, embody the 
principles, as Ave conceive, that should govern us in our pa- 
triotic warfare against the most subtle and insidious foe that 
ever menaced the inalienable rights and liberties and dearest 
interests of America : 
1st. Thorough Organization and Independent Political 



124 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

Action on the part of the Non-Slaveholding Whites of the 

South. 
2d. Ineligibility of Pro-Slavery Slaveholders — Never another 

vote to any one who advocates the Retention and Perpetu- 

ation of Human Bondage. 
3d. No Cooperation with Pro-Slavery Politicians — No Fel- 
lowship with them in Religion — No Affiliation with them 

in Society. 
4th. No Patronage to Pro-Slavery Merchants — No Guestship 

in Slave-waiting Hotels — No Fees to Pro-Slavery Lawyers 

— No Employment of Pro-Slavery Physicians — No audience 

to Pro-Slavery Pai"sons. 
5th. No more Hiring of Slaves »by Non-Slaveholders. 
6th. Abrupt Discontinuance of Subscription to Pro-Slavery 

Newspapers. 
7th. The Greatest Possible Encouragement to Free White 

Labor. 

This, then, is the outline of our scheme for the abolition of 
slavery in the Southern States. Let it be acted upon with 
due promptitude, and as certain as truth is mightier than er 
ror, fifteen years will not elapse before every foot of territory, 
from the mouth of the Delaware to the emboguing of the Rio 
Grande, shall disunite forever from the desolations of slavery, 
and glitter .with the jewels of freedom. Some time during 
this year, next, or the year following, let there be a general 
convention of non-slaveholders from every Slave State in the 
Union, to deliberate on the momentous issues now pending. 
First, let them adopt measures for holding in restraint the 
mischievous excesses of the oligarchy ; secondly, in order to 
cast off the thralldom which the despotic slave-power has fast- 
ened upon them, and, as the first step necessary to be taken 
to regain the inalienable rights and liberties with which they 
were invested by nature, but of which they have been divested 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 125 

by the Vandalic dealers in human flesh, let them devise ways 
and means for the complete annihilation of slavery ; thirdly, 
let them put forth an equitable and comprehensive platform, 
fully defining their position, and inviting the active sympathy 
and cooperation of the millions of down-trodden non-slave- 
holders throughout the Southern and Southwestern States. 
Let all these things be done, not too hastily, but with calm- 
ness, deliberation, prudence and circumspection ; if need be, 
let the delegates to the convention continue in session one or 
two weeks ; only let their labors be wisely and thoroughly 
performed ; let them, on Wednesday morning, present to the 
poor whites of the South a well-digested scheme for the recla- 
mation of their ancient rights and prerogatives, and, on the 
Thursday following, slavery in the United States will be worth 
absolutely less than nothing ; for then, besides being so des- 
picable and precarious that nobody will want it, it will be a 
lasting reproach to those in whose hands it is lodged. 

Were it not that other phases of the subject admonish us 
to be economical of space, we could suggest more than a 
dozen different plans, either of which, if scrupulously carried 
out, would lead to a wholesome, speedy, and perfect termina- 
tion of slavery. Under all the circumstances, however, it 
might be difficult for us* — perhaps it.would not be the easiest 
thing in the world for anybody else — to suggest a better plan 
than the one above. Let it, or one embodying its principal 
features, be adopted forthwith, and the last wail of slavery 
will soon be heard, growing fainter and fainter, till it dies 
utterly away, to be succeeded by the jubilant shouts of eman- 
cipated millions. 

At the very moment we write, as has been the case ever 
since the United States have had a distinct national existence, 
and as will always continue to be the case, unless right tri- 
umphs over wrong, all the civil, political, and other offices, 



126 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

within the gift of the South, are filled with negro-nursed in- 
cumbents from the ranks of that artful band of misanthropes 
— three hundred and forty-seven thousand in number — who, 
for the most part, obtain their living by breeding, buying and 
selling slaves. The magistrates in the villages, the constables 
in the districts, the commissioners of the towns, the mayors 
of the cities, the sheriffs of the counties, the judges of the va- 
rious courts, the members of the legislatures, the governors 
of the States, the representatives and senators in Congress — 
are all slaveholders. Nor does the catalogue of their usurpa- 
tions end here. By means of much barefaced arrogance and 
corruption, they have obtained control of the General Gov- 
ernment, and all the consuls, ambassadors, envoys extraordi- 
nary, and ministers plenipotentiary, who are chosen from the 
South, and commissioned to foreign countries, are selected 
with especial reference to the purity of their pro-slavery an- 
tecedents. If credentials have ever been issued to a single 
non-slaveholder of the South, we are ignorant of both the 
fact and the hearsay ; indeed, it would be very strange if this 
much abused class of persons were permitted to hold impor- 
tant offices abroad, when they are not allowed to hold unim- 
portant ones at home. 

And, then, there is tke Presidency of the United States, 
which office has been held forty-eight years by slaveholders 
from the South, and only twenty years by non-slaveholders 
from the North. Nor is this the full record of oligarchical 
obtrusion. On an average, the offices of Secretary of State, 
Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of the Interior, Secre- 
tary of the Navy, Secretary of War, Postmaster-General and 
Attorney-General, have been under the control of slave- 
drivers nearly two-thirds of the time. The Chief Justices 
and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, the Presidents pro tem. of the Senate, and the 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 127 

Speakers of the House of Representatives, have, in a large ma- 
jority of instances, been slave-breeders from the Southern 
side of the Potomac. Five slave-holding Presidents have 
been reelected to the chief magistracy of the Republic, while 
no non-slaveholder has ever held the office more than a single 
term. Thus we see plainly that even the non-slaveholders of 
the North, to whose freedom, energy, enterprise, intelligence, 
wealth, population, power, progress, and prosperity, our coun- 
try is almost exclusively indebted for its high position among 
the nations of the earth, have been arrogantly denied a due 
participation in the honors of federal office. When " the sum 
of all villainies " shall have ceased to exist, then the rights of 
the non-slaveholders of the North, of the South, of the East, 
and of the West, will be duly recognized and respected ; not 
before. 

For the last sixty-eight years, slaveholders have been the 
sole and constant representatives of the South, and what have 
they accomplished? It requires but little time and few 
words, to tell the story of their indiscreet and unhallowed 
performances. In fact, with what we have already said, ges- 
tures alone woidd suffice to answer the inquiry. We can 
make neither a more truthful nor emphatic reply than to point 
to our thinly inhabited States, to our fields despoiled of their 
virgin soil, to the despicable price of lands, to our unvisited 
cities and towns, to our vacant harbors and idle water-power, 
to the dreary absence of shipping and manufactories, to our 
unpensioned soldiers of the Revolution, to the millions of liv- 
ing monuments of ignorance, to the squalid poverty of the 
whites, and to the utter wretchedness of the blacks. 

Either directly or indirectly, are pro-slavery politicians, who 
have ostentatiously set up pretensions to statesmanship, re- 
sponsible for every dishonorable weakness and inequality that 
exists between the North and the South. Let them shirk 



128 HOW 6LAVEEY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

the responsibility if they can ; but it is morally impossible for 
them to do so. We know how ready they have always been 
to cite the numerical strength of the North, as a valid excuse 
for their inability to procure appropriations from the General 
Government, for purposes of internal improvement, for the 
establishment of lines of ocean steamers to South American 
and European ports, and for the acconrplishment of other 
objects. Before that apology ever escapes their lips again, 
let them remember that the numerical weakness of the South 
is wholly attributable to their own imbecile statism. Had 
the Southern States, in accordance with the principles enun- 
ciated in the Declaration of Independence, abolished slavery 
at the same time the Northern States abolished it, there 
would have been, long since, and most assuredly at this mo- 
ment, a larger, wealthier, wiser, and more powerful popula- 
tion, south of Mason and Dixon's line, than there now is north 
of it. This fact being so well established that no reasonable 
man denies it, it is evident that the oligarchy will have to de- 
vise another subterfuge for even temporary relief. 

Until slavery and slaveholders cease to be the only favored 
objects of legislation in the South, the North will continue 
to maintain the ascendency in every important particular. 
With those infamously mean objects out of the way, it would 
not require the non-slaveholders of the South more than a quar- 
ter of a century to bring her up, in all respects, to a glorious 
equality with the North ; nor would it take them much longer 
to surpass the latter, which is the most vigorous and honor- 
able rival that they have in the world. Three-quarters of a 
century hence, if slavery is abolished within the next ten 
years, as it ought to be, the South will, we believe, be as 
much greater than the North, as the North is now greater 
than the South. Three-quarters of a century hence, if the 
South retains slavery, which God forbid ! she wiU be to the 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 129 

North much the same that Poland is to Russia, that Cuba is 
to Spain, or that Ireland is to England. 

What we want and must have, as the only sure means of 
attaining to a position worthy of sovereign States in this 
eminently progressive and utilitarian age, is an energetic, 
intelligent, enterprising, virtuous, and unshackled population ; 
an untrammelled Press, and the Freedom of Speech. For 
ourselves, as white people, and for the negroes and other 
persons of whatever color or condition, we demand all the 
rights, interests and prerogatives, that are guaranteed to 
corresponding classes of mankind in the North, in England, 
hi France, in Germany, or in any other civilized and enlight- 
ened country. Any proposition that may he offered conced- 
ing less than this demand, will be promptly and disdainfully 
rejected. 

Speaking of the non-slaveholders of the South, George M. 
Weston, a zealous co-laborer in the cause of Freedom, says : 

" The non-slaveholding whites of the South, being not less than 
seven-tenths of the whole number of whites, would seem to he enti- 
tled to some inquiry into their actual condition ; and especially, as 
they have no real political weight or consideration in the country, 
and little opportunity to speak for themselves. I have been for 
twenty years a reader of Southern newspapers, and a reader and 
hearer of Congressional debates; but, in all that time, I do not 
recollect ever to have seen or heard these non-slaveholding whites 
referred to by Southern 'gentlemen,' as constituting any part of 
what they call ' the South.'' When the rights of the South, or its 
wrongs, or its policy, or its interests, or its institutions, are spoken 
of, reference is always intended to the rights, wrongs, policy, inte- 
rests, and institutions of the three hundred and forty-seven thousand 
slaveholders. Nobody gets into Congress from the South but by 
their direction ; nobody speaks at Washington for any Southern 
interests except theirs. Yet there is, at the South, quite another 
interest than theirs ; embracing from two to three times as many 

6* 



130 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

white people ; and, as we shall presently see, entitled to the deepest 
sympathy and commiseration, in view of the material, intellectual, 
and moral privations to which it has been subjected, the degradation 
to which it has already been reduced, and the still more fearful 
degradation with which it is threatened by the inevitable operation 
of existing causes and influences." 

The following extract, from a paper on " Domestic Manu- 
factures in the South and West," published by M. Tarver, of 
Missouri, may be appropriately introduced in this connection ; 

"The non-slaveholders possess, generally, but very small means, 
and the land which they possess is almost universally poor, and so 
sterile that a scanty subsistence is all that can be derived from its 
cultivation ; and the more fertile soil, being in the possession of the 
slaveholders, must ever remain out of the power of those who have 
none. This state of things is a great drawback, and bears heavily 
upon and depresses the moral energies of the poorer classes. The 
acquisition of a respectable position in the scale of wealth appears so 
difficult, that they decline the hopeless pursuit, and many of them 
settle down into habits of idleness, and become the almost passive 
subjects of all its consequences. And I lament to say that I have 
observed, of late years, that an evident deterioration is taking place in 
this part of the population, the younger portion of it being less edu- 
cated, less industrious, and in every point of view less respectable 
than their ancestors." 

Equally worthy of attention is the testimony of Gov. Ham- 
mond, of South Carolina, who says : 

"According to the best calculation, which, in the absence of sta- 
tistic facts, can be made, it is believed, that of the three hundred 
thousand white inhabitants of South Carolina, there are not less than 
fifty thousand whose industry, such as it is, and compensated as it is, 
is not, in the present condition of things, and does not promise to be 
hereafter, adequate to procure them, honestly, such a support as every 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 131 

white person is, and feels himself entitled to. And this, nest to 
emigration, is, perhaps, the heaviest of the weights that press upon 
the springs of our prosperity. Most of those now follow agricultural 
pursuits, in feeble, yet injurious competition with slave labor. Some, 
perhaps, not more from inclination than from the want of due en- 
couragement, can scarcely be said to work at all. They obtain a 
precarious subsistence, by occasional jobs, by hunting, by fishing, 
sometimes by plundering fields or folds, and too often by what is, 
in its effects, far worse — trading with slaves, and seducing them to 
plunder for their benefit." 

Conjoined with the sundry plain, straightforward facts 
which have issued from our own pen, these extracts show 
conclusively that immediate and independent political action 
on the part of the non-slaveholding whites of the South, is, 
with them, a matter both of positive duty, and of the utmost 
importance. As yet, it is in their power to rescue the South 
from the gulf of shame and guilt, into which slavery has 
plunged her ; but if they do not soon arouse themselves from 
their apathy, this power will be Avrenched from them, and 
then, unable to resist the strong arm of the oppressor, they 
will be completely degraded to a social and political level 
with the negroes, whose condition of servitude will, in the 
meantime, become far more abject and forlorn than it is now. 

In addition to the reasons which we have already assigned 
why no slavocrat shoidd, in the future, be elected to any 
office whatever, there are others that deserve to be carefully 
considered. Among these, to speak plainly, may be men- 
tioned the ill-breeding and the ruffianism of slaveholding 
officials. Tedious, indeed, wo\ild be the task to enumerate 
all the homicides, duels, assaults and batteries, and other 
crimes, of which they are the authors in the course of a single 
year. To the general reader their career at the seat of 
Government is well known ; there, on frequent occasions, 



132 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

choking with, rage at seeing their wretched sophistries scat- 
tered to the winds by the logical reasoning of the champions 
of Freedom, they have overstepped the bounds of common 
decency, vacated the chair of honorable controversy, and, in 
the most brutal and cowardly manner, assailed their unarmed 
opponents with bludgeons, bowie-knives and pistols. Com- 
pared with some of their barbarisms at home, hoAvever, their 
frenzied onslaughts at the national capital have been but the 
simplest breaches of civil deportment ; and it is only for the 
purpose of avoiding personalities that we now refrain from 
divulging a few instances of the unparalleled atrocities which 
they have perpetrated in legislative halls south of the Poto- 
mac. Nor is it alone in the national and State legislatures 
that they substitute brute force for genteel behavior and 
acuteness of intellect. Neither court-houses nor public streets, 
hotels nor private dwellings, rum-holes nor law-offices, are 
held sacred from their murderous conflicts. About certain 
silly abstractions that no pi-actical business man ever allows 
to occupy his time or attention, they are eternally wrangling ; 
and thus it is that rencounters, duels, homicides, and other 
demonstrations of personal violence, have become so popular in 
all slaveholding communities. A few years of entire freedom 
from the cares and perplexities of public life would, we have 
no doubt, greatly improve both their manners and their 
morals ; and Ave suggest that it is a Christian duty, which 
devolves on the non-slaveholders of the South, to disrobe 
them of the mantle of office, which they have so long worn 
with disgrace to themselves, injustice to their constituents, 
and ruin to their country. 

But what shall we say of such men as Botts, Stuart, and 
Macfarland of Virginia ; of Raynor, Morehead, and Graham 
of North Carolina ; of Davis and Hofthian of Maryland ; 
of Blair, Brown and Bates of Missouri ; of the Marshalls of 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 133 

Kentucky ; and of Nelson and Etheridge of Tennessee ? All 
these gentlemen, and many others of the same school, enter- 
tain, we believe, sentiments similar to those that were enter- 
tained by the immortal Fathers of the Republic — that slavery 
is a great moral, social, civil, and political evil, to be got rid 
of at the earliest practicable period — and if they do, in order 
to secure our votes, it is only necessary for them to " have 
the courage of their opinions," to renounce Slavery, and to 
come out frankly, fairly and squarely in favor of Freedom. 
To neither of these patriotic sons of the South, no^to any 
one of the class to which they belong, would we give any 
offence whatever. In our strictures on the criminality of 
pro-slavery demagogues we have had heretofore, and shall 
have hereafter, no sort of reference to any respectable slave- 
holder — by which we mean, any slaveholder who admits the 
injustice and inhumanity of slavery, and who is not averse to 
the discussion of measures for its speedy and total extinction. 
Such slaveholders are virtually on our side — that is, on the 
side of the non-slaveholding whites, with whom they may very 
properly be classified. On this point, once for all, we desire to 
be distinctly understood ; for it would be manifestly unjust not 
to discriminate between the anti-slavery proprietor who owns 
slaves by the law of entailment, and the pro-slavery proprie- 
tor who engages in the traffic, and becomes an aider and 
abettor of the system from sheer turpitude of heart ; hence 
the propriety of this special disclaimer. 

If we have a correct understanding of the positions which 
they assumed, some of the gentlemen whose names are written 
above, gave, during the last Presidential campaign, ample evi- 
dence of their unswerving devotion to the interests of the great 
majority of the people, the non-slaveholding whites; and it is 
our unbiased opinion that a more positive truth is nowhere 
recorded in Holy Writ, than Kenneth Raynor uttered, when 



134 IIOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

he said, in substance, that the greatest good that could pos- 
sibly happen to this country would be the complete over- 
throw of Black Democracy, alias the pro-slavery party, which 
has for its head and front the Ritchies and Wises of Virginia, 
and for its caudal termination the Keitts and Quattlebums of 
South Carolina. 

Peculiarly illustrative of the material of which sham democ- 
racy is composed was the vote polled at the Five Points 
precinct, in the city of New York, on the 4th of November, 
1856, jvhen James Buchanan was chosen President by a 
minority of the people. We will produce the figures : 

Five Points Precinct, New York City, 1S56. 

Votes cast for James Buchanan 574 

" " John C. Fremont 16 

" " Millard Fillmore 9 

It will be recollected that Col. Fremont's majority over 
Buchanan, in the State of New York, was between seventy- 
eight and seventy-nine thousand, and that he ran ahead o£ 
the Fillmore ticket to the number of nearly one hundred and 
fifty-one thousand. We have not the shadow of a doubt that 
he is perfectly satisfied with Mr. Buchanan's triumph at the 
Five Points, which, with the exception of the slave-pens in 
Southern cities, is, perhaps, the most vile and heart-sickening 
locality in the United States. 

One of the most noticeable and commendable features of 
the last general election is this : almost every State, whose 
inhabitants have enjoyed the advantages of free soil, free 
laboi-, free speech, free presses, and free schools, and who 
have, in consequence, become great in numbers, in virtue, in 
wealth, and in wisdom, voted for Fremont, the Republican 
candidate, who was pledged to use- his influence for the 
extension of like advantages to other parts of the country. 
On the other hand, with a single honorable exception, all the 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 135 

States which " have got to hating everything with the prefix 
Free, from free negroes down and up through the whole 
catalogue — free farms, free labor, free society, free will, free 
thinking, free children, and free schools," and which have 
exposed their citizens to all the perils of numerical weakness, 
absolute ignorance, and hopeless poverty, voted for Buchanan, 
the Democratic candidate, who, in reply to the overtures of 
his pro-slavery partisans, had signified his willingness to pur- 
sue a policy that would perpetuate and disseminate, without 
limit, the multitudinous evils of human bondage.. 

That less than three per cent, of those who voted for Col. 
Fremont, that only about five per cent, of those who gave 
their suffrages to Mr. Fillmore, and that more than eighteen 
per cent, of those who supported Mr. Buchanan, were per- 
sons over one and twenty years of age who could not read 
and write, are estimates which we have no doubt are not far 
from the truth, and which in the absence of reliable statistics, 
we venture to give, hoping, by their publicity, to draw closer 
attention to the fact, that the illiterate foreigners of the 
North, and the unlettered natives of the South, were cor- 
dially united in their suicidal adherence to the pro-slavery 
party. With few exceptions, all the intelligent non-slave- 
holders of the South, in concert with the more respectable 
slaveholders, voted for Mr. Fillmore ; certain rigidly patriotic 
persons of the former class, whose hearts were so entirely 
with the gallant Fremont that they refused to vote at all — 
simply because they did not dare to express their preference 
for him — form the exceptions to which we allude. 

Though the Whig, Democratic, and Know-Nothing news- 
papers, in all the States, free and slave, denounced Col. Fre- • 
mont as an intolerant Catholic, it is now generally conceded 
that he was nowhere supported by the peculiar friends of 
Pope Pius IX. The votes polled at the Five Points precinct, 



136 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

which is almost exclusively inhabited by low Irish Catholics, 
show how powerfully the Jesuitical influence was brought to 
bear against him. At that delectable locality, as we have 
already shown, the timid Sage of Wheatland received five 
hundred and seventy- four votes — whereas the dauntless 
Finder of Empire received only sixteen. 

True to their instincts for Freedom, the Germans, generally, 
voted the right ticket, and they will do it again, and continue 
to do it. With the intelligent Protestant element of the 
Fatherland on our side, we can well afford to dispense with 
the ignorant Catholic element of the Emerald Isle. In the 
influences which they exert on society, there is so little dif- 
ference between Slavery, Popery, and Negro-driving Democ- 
racy, that we are not at all surprised to see them going hand 
in hand in their diabolical work of inhumanity and desolation. 

There is, indeed, no lack of evidence to show that the 
Democratic party of to-day is simply and unreservedly a 
sectional slavery party. On the 15th of December, 1856, but 
a few weeks subsequent to the appearance of a scandalous 
message from an infamous governor of South Carolina, 
recommending the reopening of the African slave trade, 
Emerson Etheridge of Tennessee — honor to his name ! — sub- 
mitted, in the House of Representatives, the following timely 
resolution : 

" Resolved — That this House regard all suggestions or propositions 
of every kind, by whomsoever made, for a revival of the slave trade, 
as shocking to the moral sentiments of the enlightened portion of 
mankind, and that any act on the part of Congress, legislating for, 
conniving at, or legalizing that horrid and inhuman traffic, would 
iustly subject the United States to the reproach and execration of 
all civilized and Christian people throughout the world." 

Who voted for this resolution ? and who voted against it ? 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 137 

Let- the yeas and nays answer ; they are on record, and he 
who takes the trouble to examine them will find that the 
resolution encountered no opposition worth mentioning, 
except from members of the Democratic party. Scrutinize 
the yeas and nays on any other motion or resolution affecting 
the question of slavery, and the fact that a majority of the 
members of this party have uniformly voted for the retention 
and extension of the " sum of all villianies," will at once be 
apparent. 

For many years the slave-driving Democrats of the South 
have labored most strenuously, both by day and by night — 
we regret to say how unsuccessfully — to point out abolition 
proclivities in the Whig and Know-Nothing parties, the lat- 
ter of which is now buried, and deservedly, so deep in the 
depths of the dead, that it is quite preposterous to suppose 
it will ever see the light of resurrection. 

For its truckling concessions to the slave power, the Whig 
party merited defeat, and defeated it was, and that, too, in 
the most decisive and overwhelming manner. But there is 
yet in this party much vitality, and if its friends will reorgan- 
ize, detach themselves from the burden of Slavery, and hoist 
the fair flag of Freedom, the time may come, at a day by no 
means remote, when their hearts will exult in triumph over 
the ruins of miscalled Democracy. 

It is not too late, however, for the Democratic party to 
secure to itself a pure renown and an almost certain perpetu- 
ation of its power. Let it at once discard the worship of 
Slavery, and do earnest battle for the principles of Freedom, 
and it will five victoriously to a period far in the future. On 
the other hand, if it does not soon repudiate the fatal here- 
sies which it has incorporated into its creed, its doom will be 
inevitable. Until the black flag entirely disappears from its 
array, we warn the non-slaveholders of the South to repulse 



138 HOW SLAVERY CAK BE ABOLISHED. 

.and keep it at a distance, as they would the emblazoned 
skull and cross-bones that flout them from the flag of the 
pirate. 

With regard to the sojmistical reasoning which teaches 
that abolitionists, before abolishing slavery, should compen- 
sate the slaveholders for all or any number of the negroes in 
their possession, we shall endeavor not to be wearisome ; but 
wishing to brace our arguments, in every important particu- 
lar, with unequivocal testimony from men whom we are 
accustomed to regard as models of political sagacity and 
integrity — from Southern men as far as possible — we here- 
with present an extract from a speech delivered in the Vir- 
ginia House of Delegates, January 20, 1832, by Charles 
James Faulkner, whose sentiments, as then and there 
expressed, can hardly fail to find a response in the heart of 
every intelligent, upright man : 

" But, sir, it is said, that Society having conferred this property on 
the slaveholder, it cannot now take it from him without an adequate 
compensation, by which is meant full value. I may he singular in 
the opinion, hut I defy the legal research of the House to point me 
to a principle recognized by the law, even in the ordinary course of 
its adjudications, where the community pays for property which is 
removed or destroyed because it is a nuisance, and found injurious to 
that society. There is, I humbly apprehend, no such principle. 
There is no obligation upon society to continue your right one moment 
after it becomes injurious to the best interests of society ; nor to com- 
pensate you for the loss of that, the deprivation of which is demanded 
by the safety of the State, and in which general benefit you partici- 
pate as a member of the community. Sir, there is to my mind a 
manifest distinction between condemning private property to be ap- 
plied to some beneficial public purpose, and condemning or removing 
private property which is ascertained to be a positive wrong to soci- 
ety. It is a distinction which pervades the whole genius of the law ; 
and is founded upon the idea, that any man who holds property 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. " 139 

injurious to the peace of that society of which ho is a member, thereby 
violates the condition upon the observance of which his right to the 
property is alone guaranteed. For property of the first class con- 
demned there ought to be compensation ; but for the property of the 
latter class, none can be demanded upon principle, none accorded as 
a matter of right. 

" It is conceded that, at this precise moment of our legislation 
slaves are injurious to the interests and threaten the subversion and 
ruin of this Commonwealth. Their present number, their increasing 
number, all admonish us of this. In different terms, and in more 
measured language, the same fact has been conceded by all who have 
yet addressed this House. ' Something must oe done,'' emphatically 
exclaimed the gentleman from Dinwiddie ; and I thought I could per- 
ceive a response to that declaration, in the countenances of a large 
majority of this body. And why must something be done ? Because 
if not, says the gentleman from Campbell, the throats of all the 
white people of Virginia will be cut. ' No,' says the gentleman from 
Dinwiddie, ' the whites cannot be conquered — the throats of the 
olaclcs will be cut.' It is a trifling difference, to be sure, sir, and 
matters not to the argument. For the fact is conceded, that one race 
or the other must be exterminated. 

"Sir, such being the actual condition of this Commonwealth, I ask 
if we would not be justified now, supposing all considerations of policy 
and humanity concurred, without even a moment's delay, in staving 
off this appalling and overwhelming calamity ? Sir, if this immense 
negro population were now in arms, gathering into black and formi- 
dable masses of attack, would that man be listened to, who spoke 
about property, who prayed you not to direct your artillery to such 
or such a point, for you would destroy some of his property ? Sir, to 
the eye of the statesman, as to the eye of Omniscience, dangers 
pressing, and dangers that must necessarily press, are alike present. 
"With a single glance he embraces Virginia now, with the elements of 
destruction reposing quietly upon her bosom, and Virginia as lighted 
from one extremity to the other with the torch of servile insurrec- 
tion and massacre. It is not sufficient for him that the match is not 
yet applied. It is enough that the magazine is open, and the match 
will shortly be applied. 



140 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

" Sir, it is true in national as it is in private contracts, that loss and 
injury to one party may constitute as fair a consideration as gain to 
the other. Does the slaveholder, while he is enjoying his slaves, re- 
flect upon the deep injury and incalculable loss which the possession 
of that property inflicts upon the true interests of the country ? 
Slavery, it is admitted, is an evil — it is an institution which presses 
heavily against the best interests of the State. It banishes free white 
labor, it exterminates the mechanic, the artisan, the manufacturer. 
It deprives them of occupation. It deprives them of bread. It con- 
verts the energy of a community into indolence, its power into imbe- 
cility, its efficiency into weakness. Sir, being thus injurious, have 
we not a right to demand its extermination ? Shall society suffer 
that the slaveholder may continue to gather his crop of human flesh ? 
What is his mere pecuniary claim compared with the great interests 
of the common weal ? Must the country languish, droop, die, that 
the slaveholder may flourish ? Shall all the interests be subservient 
to one — all rights subordinate to those of the slaveholder ? Has not 
the mechanic, have not the middle classes their rights — rights incom- 
patible with the existence of slavery? 

"Sir, so great and overshadowing are the evils of slavery, so sensi- 
bly are they felt by those who have traced the causes of our national 
decline — so perceptible is the poisonous operation of its principles in 
the varied and diversified interests in this Commonwealth, that all 
whose minds are not warped by prejudice or interest, must admit 
that the disease has now assumed that mortal tendency, as to justify 
the application of any remedy which, under the great law of State 
necessity, we might consider advisable." 

At once let the good and true men of this country, the 
patriot sons of the patriot fathers, determine that the sun 
which rises to celebrate the centennial anniversary of our na- 
tional independence, shall not set on the head of any slave 
within the limits of this Republic. Will not the non-slave- 
holders of the North, of the South, of the East, and of the 
"West, heartily, unanimously sanction this proposition ? Will 
it not be cheerfully indorsed by many of the slaveholders 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 141 

themselves ? Will any respectable man enter a protest against 
it ? On the 4th of July, 1876 — sooner if we can — let us make 
good, at least so far as we are concerned, the Declaration of 
Independence, which was proclaimed in Philadelphia on the 
4th of July, 1776— that "all men are endowed by their Crea- 
tor with certain inalienable rights ; that, among these, are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that to secure these 
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their 
just powers from the consent of the governed ; that whenever 
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it 
is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to insti- 
tute a new government, laying its foundation on such princi- 
ples, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall 
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." In 
purging our land of the iniquity of negro slavery, we shall 
only be carrying on the great work that was so successfully 
commenced by our noble sires of the Revolution ; some future 
generation may possibly complete the work by annulling the 
last and least form of oppression. 

To turn the slaves away from their present homes — away 
from all the property and means of support which their labor 
has mainly produced, would be unpardonably cruel — exceed- 
ingly unjust. Still more cruel and unjust would it be, how- 
ever, to the non-slaveholding whites no less than to the negroes, 
to grant further toleration to the existence of slavery. In any 
event, come what will, transpire what may, the system must 
be abolished. The evils, if any, which are to result from abo- 
lition, cannot, by any manner of means, be half as great as the 
evils which are certain to overtake us in case of its continuance. 
The perpetuation of slavery is the climax of iniquity. 

Two hundred and thirty-nine years have the negroes in 
America been held in inhuman bondage. During the whole 
of this long period they have toiled unceasingly, from the 



142 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

grey of dawn till the dusk of eve, for their cruel taskmasters, 
who have rewarded them with scanty allowances of the most 
inferior qualities of victuals and clothes, with heartless sepa- 
rations of the tenderest ties of kindred, with epithets, with 
scoldings, with execrations, and with the lash — and, not un- 
frequently, with the fatal bludgeon or the more deadly wea- 
pon. From the labor of their hands, and from the fruit of 
their loins, the human-mongers of the South have become 
wealthy, insolent, corrupt and tyrannical. In reason and in 
conscience, it must be admitted, the slaves might claim for 
themselves a liberal allowance of the proceeds of their labor. 
If they were to demand an equal share of all the property, 
real and personal, which has been accumulated or produced 
through their efforts, Heaven, we believe, would recognize 
them as honest claimants. 

Elsewhere we have shown, by just and liberal estimates, 
that, on the single score of damages to lands, the slaveholders 
are, at this moment, indebted to the non-slaveholding whites 
in the extraordinary sum of $7,544,148,825. Considered in 
connection with the righteous claim of wages for services 
which the negroes might bring against their masters, these 
figures are the heralds of the significant fact that, if strict 
justice could be meted out to all parties in the South, the 
slaveholders would not only be stripped of every dollar, but 
they would become in law as they are in reality, the hopeless 
debtors of the myriads of unfortunate slaves, white and black, 
who are now cringing, and fawning, and festering around 
them. 

For the services of the blacks from the 20th of August, 
1620, up to the 4th of July, 1869 — an interval of precisely two 
hundred and forty-eight years ten months and fourteen days 
— their masters, if unwilling, ought, in our judgment, to be 
compelled to grant them their freedom, and to pay each and 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 143 

every one of them at least sixty dollars cash in hand. The 
aggregate sum thus raised would amount to about two hun- 
dred and fifty million of dollars, which is less than the total 
market value of two entire crops of cotton — one-half of which 
sum would be amply sufficient to land every negro in this 
country on the coast of Liberia, whither, if we had the power, 
we would ship them all within the next six months. As 
a means of protection against the exigencies which might 
arise from a sudden transition from their present homes in 
America to their futures homes in Africa, and for the purpose 
of enabling them there to take the iniatory step in the walks 
of civilized life, the remainder of the sum — say about one 
hundred and twenty-five million of dollars — might, very pro- 
perly, be equally distributed amongst them after their arrival 
in the land of their fathers. 

Dr. James Hall, the Secretary of the Maryland Colonization 
Society, informs us that the average cost of sending negroes 
to Liberia does not exceed thirty dollars each ; and it is his 
opinion that arrangements might be made on an extensive 
plan for conveying them thither at an average expense of not 
more than twenty-five dollars each. 

The American colonization movement, as now systematized 
and conducted, is, in our opinion, simply an American humane 
farce. At present the slaves are increasing in this country at 
the rate of nearly one hundred thousand per annum ; within 
the last thirteen years, inclusive, as will appear on the next 
page, the American Colonization Society has sent to Liberia 
only about five thousand negroes. 



144 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

EMIGRANTS SENT TO LIBERIA BY THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY, 
Baring the thirteen years ending January 1st, 1860. 

Inl847 39 

Inl848 213 

In 1849 474 

InlS50 690 

Inl851 2T9 

InlS52 568 

In 1853 583 Emigrants 

In 1854 783 ]■ to 

In 1855 207 Liberia. 

In 1856 544 

In 1857 370 

InlSSS 163 

Inl859 238 

Total 5,051 , 

The average of this total is a fraction less than three hun- 
dred and eighty-nine, which, however, may, with sufficient 
accuracy, be said to be the number of negroes annually colo- 
nized by the society ; while the yearly increase of slaves, as 
previously stated, is little less than one hundred thousand ! 
Fiddlesticks for such colonization ! Once for all, within a 
reasonably short period, let us, by an equitable system of 
legislation, and by such other measures as may be right and 
proper, compel the slaveholders to do something like justice 
to their negroes by giving each and every one of them his 
freedom, and sixty dollars in current money; then let us 
charter all the ocean steamers, packets and clipper ships that 
can be had on liberal terms, and keep them constantly plying 
between the ports of America and Africa, until all the slaves 
who are here held in bondage shall enjoy freedom in the land 
of their fathers. Under a well-devised and properly conducted 
system of operations, but a few years would be required to 
redeem the United States from the monstrous curse of negro 

slavery. 

Some few years ago, when certain ethnographical oligarchs 
proved to their own satisfaction that the negro was an inferior 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 145 

" type of mankind," they chuckled wonderfully, and avowed, 
in substance, that it was right for the stronger race to kidnap 
and enslave the weaker — that because Nature had been 
pleased to do something more for the Caucasian race than for 
the African, the former, by virtue of its superiority, was per- 
fectly justifiable in holding the latter in absolute and per- 
petual bondage ! No system of logic could be more antago- 
nistic to the spirit of true democracy. It is probable that the 
world does not contain two persons who are exactly alike in 
all respects ; yet "all men are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty ', and 
the pursuit of happiness." All mankind may or may not be 
the descendants of Adam and Eve. In our own humble way 
of thinking, we are frank to confess, we do not believe in the 
unity of the races. This is a matter, however, which has 
little or nothing to do with the great question at issue. Aside 
from any theory concerning the original parentage of the dif- 
ferent races of men, facts, material and immaterial, palpable 
and impalpable— facts of the eyes and facts of the conscience 
— crowd around us on every hand, heaping proof upon proof, 
that slavery is a shame, a crime, and a curse — a great moral, 
social, civil, and political evil — an oppressive burden to the 
blacks, and an incalculable injury to the whites — a stumbling- 
block to the nation, an impediment to progress, a damper on 
all the nobler instincts, principles, aspirations and enterprises 
of man, and a dire enemy to every true interest. 

"Waiving all other counts, Ave have, we think, shown, to 
the satisfaction of every impartial reader, that, as elsewhere 
stated, on the single score of damages to lands, the slave- 
holders are, at this moment, indebted to us, the non-slave- 
holding whites, in the enormous sum of nearly seventy-six 
hundred million of dollars. What shall be done with this 
amount ? It is just ; shall payment be demanded ? No ; all 

7 



146 HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 

the slaveholders in the country could not pay it ; nor shall 
we ever ask them for even a moiety of the amount — no, not 
even for a dime, nor yet for a cent ; we are willing to forfeit 
every farthing for the sake of freedom ; for ourselves we ask 
no indemnification for the past : we only demand justice for 
the future. 

But, sirs, slaveholders, chevaliers and lords of the lash, we 
are unwilling to allow you to cheat the negroes out of all the 
rights and claims to which, as human heings, they are most 
sacredly entitled. Not alone for ourself as an individual, but 
for others also — particularly for six million of Southern non- 
slaveholding whites, whom your iniquitous statism has 
debarred from almost all the mental and material comforts of 
life — do we speak, when we say, you must, sooner or later, 
emancipate your slaves, and pay each and every one of them 
at least sixty dollars cash in hand. By doing this, you will 
be restoring to them their natural rights, and remunerating 
them at the rate of less than twenty-six cents per annum for 
the long and cheerless period of their servitude, from the 
20th of August, 1620, when, on James River, in Virginia, 
they became the unhappy slaves of heartless tyrants. More- 
over, by doing this you will be performing but a simple act 
of justice to the non-slaveholding whites, upon whom the 
system of slavery has weighed scarcely less heavily than upon 
the negroes themselves. You will also be applying a saving 
balm to your own outraged hearts and consciences, and your 
children — yourselves in fact — freed from the accursed stain 
of slavery, will become respectable, useful, and honorable 
members of society. 

And now, sirs, we have thus laid down our ultimatum. 
What are you going to do about it ? Something dreadful, 
of course ! Perhaps you will dissolve the Union again. Do 
it, if you dare ! Our motto, and we would have you under- 



HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED. 147 

stand it, is The Abolition of Slavery, and the Perpetuation 
of the Union. If, by any means, you do succeed in your 
treasonable attempts, to take the South out of the Union 
to-day, we will bring her back to-morrow — if she goes away 
with you, she shall return without you. 

Do not mistake the meaning of the last clause of the last 
sentence ; Ave could elucidate it so thoroughly that no intelli- 
gent person could fail to comprehend it; but, for reasons 
which may hereafter appear, we forego the task. 

Henceforth there are other interests to be consulted in the 
South, aside from the interests of negroes and slaveholders. 
A profound sense of duty incites us to make the greatest 
possible efforts for the abolition of Slavery ; an equally pro- 
found sense of duty calls for a continuation of those efforts 
until the very last foe to Freedom shall have been utterly 
vanquished. To the summons of the righteous monitor within, 
we shall endeavor to prove faithful ; no opportunity for 
inflicting a mortal wound in the side of slavery shall be per- 
mitted to pass us unimproved. 

Thus, terror-engenderers of the South, have we fully and 
frankly defined our position ; we have no modifications to 
propose, no compromises to offer, nothing to retract. Frown, 
sirs, fret, foam, prepare your weapons, threat, strike, shoot, 
stab, bring on civil war, dissolve the Union, nay annihilate 
the solar system if you will — do all this, more, less, better, 
worse, anything — do what you will, sirs, you can neither foil 
nor intimidate us ; our purpose is as firmly fixed as the eternal 
pillars of Heaven ; we have determined to abolish Slavery, 
and, so help us God, abolish it we will ! Take this to bed 
with you to-night, sirs, and think about it, dream over it, 
and let us know how you feel to-morrow morning. 



CHAPTER III. 

SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

Slavery is detested — we feel its fatal effects — we deplore it witli all the ear- 
nestness of humanity. — Patrick Henky. 

If it please the reader, let him forget all that we have writ- 
ten on the subject of slavery ; if it accord with his inclination, 
let him ignore all that we may write hereafter. We seek not 
to give special currency to our own peculiar opinions ; our 
greatest ambition, in these pages, is to popularize the sayings 
and admonitions of wiser and better men. Miracles, we be- 
lieve, are no longer wrought in this bedeviled world ; but if, 
by any conceivable or possible supernatural event, the great 
Founders of the Republic, Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and 
others, could be reinvested with corporeal life, and returned 
to the South, there is scarcely a slaveholder between the 
Potomac and the mouth of the Mississippi, that would not 
burn to pounce upon them with bludgeons, bowie-knives and 
pistols ! Yes, without adding another word, Washington 
would be mobbed for what he has already said. Were Jeffer- 
son now employed as a professor in a Southern college, he 
would be dismissed and driven from the State, perhaps mur- 
dered before he reached the. border. If Patrick Henry were 
a bookseller in Alabama, though it might be demonstrated 
beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had never bought, sold, 
received, or presented, any kind of literature except Bibles 
and Testaments, he would first be subjected to the ignominy 

148 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 149 

of a coat of tar and feathers, and then limited to the option of 
unceremonious expatriation or death. How seemingly im- 
possible are these statements, and yet how true ! Where do 
we stand ? What is our faith ? Are we a flock without a 
shepherd? a people without a prophet? a nation without a 
government ? 

Has the past, with all its glittering monuments of genius 
and patriotism, furnished no beacon by which we may direct 
our footesteps in the future ? If we but prove true to our- 
selves, and worthy of our ancestry, we have nothing to fear ; 
our Revolutionary sires have devised and bequeathed to us 
an almost perfect national policy. Let us cherish, and de- 
fend, and build upon, the fundamental principles of that pol- 
ity, and we shall most assuredly reap the golden fruits of un- 
paralleled power, virtue and prosperity. Heaven forbid that 
a desperate faction of pro-slavery mountebanks should suc- 
ceed in their infamous eflbrts to quench the spirit of liberty, 
which our forefathers infused into those two sacred charts of 
our political faith, the Declaration of Independence, and the 
Constitution of the United States. Oligarchical politicians 
are alone responsible for the continuance of African slavery in 
the South. For purposes of self-aggrandizement, they have 
kept learning and civilization from the people ; they have will, 
fully misinterpreted the national compacts and have outraged 
their own consciences by falsely declaring to their illiterate con- 
stituents, that the Founders of the Republic were not abolition- 
ists. When the dark clouds of slavery, error, ignorance and 
superstition shall have passed away — and Ave believe the time 
is near at hand when they are to be dissipated — the freemen 
of the South, like those of other sections, will learn the glo- 
rious truth, that inflexible opposition to Human Bondage has 
formed one of the distinguishing characteristics of every really 
good or great man that our country has produced. 



150 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

Non-slaveholders of the South ! up to the present period, 
neither as a body, nor as individuals, have you ever had an 
independent existence ; but, if true to yourselves and to the 
memory of your fathers, you, in equal copartnership with the 
non-slaveholders of the North, will soon become the honored 
rulers and proprietors of the most powerful, prosperous, vir- 
tuous, free, and peaceful nation, on which the sun has ever 
shone. Already has the time arrived for you to decide upon 
what basis you will erect your political superstructure. Upon 
whom will you depend for an equitable and judicious form of 
constitutional government? Whom will you designate as 
models for your future statesmen ? Your choice lies between 
the dead and the living — between the Washingtons, the Jef- 
fersons and the Madisons of the past, and the Quattlebums, 
the Iversons and the Slidells of the present. We have 
chosen ; choose ye, remembering that freedom or slavery is 
to be the issue of your option. 

As the result of much reading and research, and at the 
expenditure of no inconsiderable amount of time, labor, and 
money, we now proceed to make known the anti-slavery sen- 
timents of those noble abolitionists, the Fathers of the Repub- 
lic, whose liberal measures of public policy have been so crim- 
inally perverted by the treacherous advocates of slavery. 

Let us listen, in the first place, to the voice of him who was 
"first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
countrymen," to 

THE VOICE OF WASHINGTON. 

In a letter to John F. Mercer, dated September 9th, 1786, 
General Washington says : 

"I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should com- 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 151 

pel me to it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my 
first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery, in this coun- 
try, may be abolished by law." 

In a letter to Robert Morris, dated April 12, 1786, he 
says : 

" I hope it will not be conceived from these observations that it is 
my wish to hold the unhappy people who are the subject of this letter 
in slavery. I can only say that there is not a man living, who wishes 
more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of 
it ; but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can 
be accomplished, and that is by legislative authority ; and this, so far 
as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting." 

Under date of April 5, 1783, he says, in a letter : 

" To the Marquis de Lafayette : 

" The scheme, my dear Marquis, which you propose as a prece- 
dent, to encourage the emancipation of the black people in this 
country from the state of bondage in which they are held, is a strik- 
ing evidence of the benevolence of your heart. I shall be happy to 
join you in so laudable a work ; but will defer going into a detail of 
the business till I have the pleasure of seeing you." 

In another letter to Lafayette, he says : 

" The benevolence of your heart, my dear Marquis, is so conspicu- 
ous on all occasions, that I never wonder at any fresh proofs of it ; 
but your late purchase of an estate in the Colony of Cayenne, with 
the view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble 
proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse 
itself generally into the minds of the people of this country." 

In a letter to Sir John Sinclair, he further said : 

" There are in Pennsylvania laws for the gradual abolition of sla- 



152 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

very, which neither Virginia nor Maryland have at present, hut which 
nothing is more certain than they must have, and at a period not re- 
mote." 

In a letter to Charles Pinckney, governor of Soiitli Carolina, 
on the 17th of March, 1792, he says 

" I must say that I lament the decision of your legislature upon 
the question of importing slaves after March, 1793. I was in hopes 
that motives of policy, as well as other good reasons, supported hy 
the direful effects of Slavery, which at this moment are presented, 
would have operated to produce a total prohibition of the importation 
of slaves, whenever the question came to he agitated in any State that 
might be interested in the measure." 

From his last will and testament Ave make the following 
extract : 

" Upon the decease of my wife, it is my will and desire that all the 
slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom. To 
emancipate them during her life would, though earnestly wished by 
me, be attended with such insuperahle difficulties, on account of their 
intermixture by marriage with the dower negroes, as to excite the 
most painful sensation, if not disagreeable consequences, from the 
latter, when both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same pro- 
prietor, it not being in my power, under the tenure hy which the 
dower negroes are held, to manumit them." 

It is said that, " when Mrs. Washington learned, from the 
will of her deceased husband, that the only obstacle to the 
immediate perfection of this provision w r as her right of dower, 
she at once gave it up, and the slaves w r ere made free." A 
man might possibly concentrate within himself more real vir- 
tue and influence than ever "Washington possessed, and yet he 
would not be too good for such a wife. 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 153 

From the Father of his Country, we now turn to the author 
of the Declaration of Independence. We will listen to 



THE VOICE OF JEFFERSON. 

On the 39th and 40th pages of his "Notes on Virginia," 
Jefferson says : 

" There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of 
our people, produced by tbe existence of slavery among us. The 
whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of 
the most boisterous passions — the most unremitting despotism on tbe 
one part, and degrading submissions on tbe other. Our children seo 
this, and learn to imitate it ; for man is an imitative animal. This 
quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his 
grave, he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could 
find no motive, either in his philanthropy or bis self-love, for restrain- 
ing the intemperance of passion toward his slave, it should always 
be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not 
sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the linea- 
ments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, 
gives a loose rein to the worst of passions, and, thus nursed, educated, 
and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with 
odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his 
manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with 
what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one 
half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms 
those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the 
one part and the amor patriot of the other; for if a slave can have a 
country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in 
which he is born to live and labor for another ; in which he must 
lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute, as far as depends on 
his individual endeavors, to the evanishment of the human race, or 
entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations pro- 
ceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry ia 
also destroyed ; for, in a warm climate, no man will labor for himself 



154 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY 

who can make another labor for him. This is so true, that of the 
proprietors of slaves a very small proportion, indeed, are ever seen to 
labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when 
we have removed their only firm basis — a conviction in the minds of 
the people that these liberties are the gift of God ? — that they are not 
to be violated but by his wrath ? Indeed, I tremble for my country 
when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; 
that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolu- 
tion of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possi- 
ble events ; that it may become probable by supernatural interfer- 
ence ! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us 
in such a contest." 

While Virginia was yet a Colony, in 1774, she held a Con- 
vention to appoint delegates to attend the first general Con- 
• gress, which was to assemble, and did assemble, in Philadel- 
phia, in September of the same year. Before that Convention, 
Mr. Jefferson made an exposition of the rights of British 
America, in which he said : 

" The abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire 
in these Colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant 
State. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves, it is neces- 
sary to exclude further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated 
attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which 
might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his 
majesty's negative ; thus preferring the immediate advantage of a 
few African corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, 
and the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous 
practice." 

In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, of 
which it is well known he was the author, we find this charge 
against the King of Great Britain : 

44 He has waged crnel war against human nature itself, violating 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 159 

and barbarous, but more bonest, ancestors detested. Is it not amaz- 
ing that at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and un- 
derstood with precision, in a country above all others fond of liberty 
— that in such an age and in such a country, we find men professing 
a religion the most mild, humane, gentle, and generous, adopting 
such a principle, as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with 
the Bible, and destructive to liberty ? Every thinking, honest man 
rejects it in speculation. How free in practice from conscientious 
motives ! Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my 
own purchase ? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of 
living here without them. I will not, I cannot justify it. However 
culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to virtue as to own 
the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of 
conformity to them. I believe a time will come when an opportunity 
will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we can 
do is to improve it, if it happens in our day ; if not, let us transmit 
to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy 
lot, and an abhorrence for slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished- 
for reformation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with 
lenity. It is the furthest advance we can make toward justice. It 
is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion, to show that it is at 
variance with that law which warrants slavery." 

Again, this great orator says — 

" It would rejoice my very soul, that every one of my fellow-beings 
was emancipated. We ought to lament and deplore the necessity of 
holding our fellow-men in bondage. Believe me; I shall honor 
the Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish slavery." 

THE VOICE OF RANDOLPH. 

That very eccentric genius, John Randolph, of Roanoke, in 
a letter to William Gibbons, in 1820, says : 

" With unfeigned respect and regard, and as sincere a deprecation 
on the extension of slavery and its horrors, as any other man, be him 



160 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

whom he may, I am your friend, in the literal sense of that much 
abused word. I say much abused, because it is applied to the leagues 
of vice and avarice and ambition, instead of good will toward man 
from love of him who is the Prince of Peace." 

While in Congress, he said : 

" Sir, I envy neither the heart nor the head of that man from the 
North who rises here to defend slavery on principle." 

It is well known that he emancipated all his negroes. The 
following lines from his will are well worth perusing and pre- 
serving : 

" I give to my slaves their freedom, to which my conscience tells 
me they are justly entitled. It has a long time been a matter of the 
deepest regret to me that the circumstances under which I inherited 
them, and the obstacles thrown in the way by the laws of the land, 
have prevented my emancipating them in my lifetime, which it is 
my full intention to do in case I can accomplish it." 

THOMAS M. RANDOLPH. 

In an address to the Virginia legislature, in 1820, Gov. 
Randolph said : 

" We have been far outstripped by States to whom nature has been 
far less bountiful. It is painful to consider what might have been, 
under other circumstances, the amount of general wealth in Virginia." 

THOMAS JEFFERSON RANDOLPH. 

Iii 1832, Mr. Randolph, of Albemarle, in the legislature of 
Virginia, used the follow T ing most graphic and emphatic lan- 
guage : 

"I agree with gentlemen in the necessity of arming the State for 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 161 

internal defence. I will unite with them in any effort to restore con- 
fidence to the public mind, and to conduce to the sense of the safety 
of our wives and our children. Yet, sir, I must ask upon whom is 
to fall the burden of this defence ? Not upon the lordly masters of 
their hundred slaves, who will never turn out except to retire with 
their families when danger threatens. No, sir ; it is to fall upon the 
less wealthy class of our citizens, chiefly upon the non-slaveholder. 
I have known patrols turned out when there was not a slaveholder 
among them ; and this is the practice of the country. I have slept 
in times of alarm quiet in bed, without having a thought of care, 
while these individuals, owning none of this property themselves, 
were patrolling under a compulsory process, for a pittance of seventy- 
five cents for twelve hours, the very curtilage of my house, and 
guarding that property which was alike dangerous to them and my- 
self. After all, this is but an expedient. As this population be- 
comes more numerous, it becomes less productive. Your guard must 
be increased, until finally its profits will not pay for the expense of 
its subjection. Slavery has the effect of lessening the free population 
of a country. 

" The gentleman has spoken of the increase of the female slaves 
being a part of the profit. It is admitted ; but no great evil can be 
averted, no good attained, without some inconvenience. It may be 
questioned how far it is desirable to foster and encourage this branch 
of profit. It is a practice, and an increasing practice, in parts of Vir- 
ginia, to rear slaves for market. ITow can an honorable mind, a 
patriot, and a lover of his country, bear to see this Ancient Domin- 
ion, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and patriotism of her 
sons in the cause of liberty, converted into one grand menagerie, 
where men are to be reared for the market, like oxen for the sham- 
bles ? Is it better, is it not worse, than the slave trade — that trade 
which enlisted the labor of the good and wise of every creed, and 
every clime, to abolish it ? The trader receives the slave, a stranger 
in language, aspect, and manners, from the merchant who has brought 
him from the interior. The ties of father, mother, husband, and 
child, have all been rent in twain ; before he receives him, his soul 
has become callous. But here, sir, individuals whom the master has 
known from infancy, whom he has seen sporting in the innocent 



162 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

gambols of childhood, who have been accustomed to look to him for 
protection, he tears from the mother's arms and sells into a straDge 
country among strange people, subject to cruel taskmasters. 

" He has attempted to justify slavery here, because it exists in 
Africa, and has stated that it exists all over the world. Upon the 
same principle he could justify Mahometanism, with its plurality of 
wives, petty wars for plunder, robbery, and murder, or any other of 
the abominations and enormities of savage tribes. Does slavery ex- 
ist in any part of civilized Europe? No, sir, in no part of it." 

PEYTON RANDOLPH. 

On the 20th of October, 17*74, while Congress was iu 
session in Philadelphia, Peyton Randolph, President, the fol- 
lowing resolution, among others, was unanimously adopted : 

" That we will neither import nor purchase any slaves imported 
after the first day of December next ; after which time we will wholly 
discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it our- 
selves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manu- 
factures to those who are concerned in it." 

EDMUND RANDOLPH. 

The Constitution of the United States contains the follow- 
ing provision : 

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the 
laws thereof, escaping to another, shall, in consequence of any law 
or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but 
shall lie delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or 
labor may be due." 

To the studious attention of those Vandals who contend 
that the above provision requires the rendition of fugitive 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 163 

slaves, we respectfully commend the following resolution, 
which, it will be observed, was unanimously adopted : 

" On motion of Mr. Randolph, the word ' servitude ' was struck 
out, and ' service ' unanimously inserted — the former being thought 
to express the condition of slaves, and the latter the obligations of 
free persons." — Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1569. 

Well done for the Randolphs ! 



THE VOICE OF CLAY. 

Henry Clay, whom nearly everybody loved, and at the 
mention of whose name the American heart always throbs 
with emotions of grateful remembrance, said, in an address 
before the Kentucky Colonization Society, in 1829: 

"It is believed that nowhere in the/arming portion of the United 
States would slave labor be generally employed, if the proprietor 
were not tempted to raise slaves by the high price of the Southern 
market, which keeps it up in his own." 

In the United States Senate, in 1850, he used the follow- 
ing memorable words : 

" I am extremely sorry to hear the senator from Mississippi say 
that he requires, first the extension of the Missouri Compromise line 
to the Pacific, and also that he is not satisfied with that, but requires, 
if I understand him correctly, a positive provision for the admission 
of slavery south of that line. And now, sir, coming from a slave 
State, as I do, I owe it to myself, I owe it to truth, I owe it to the 
subject, to say that no earthly power could induce me to vote for a 
specific measure for the introduction of slavery where it had not 
before existed, either south or north of that line. Coming as I do 
from a slave State, it is my solemn, deliberate and well-matured 
determination that no power, no earthly power, shall compel me to 



164 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

vote for the positive introduction of slavery either south or north of 
that line. Sir, while you reproach, and justly, too, our British 
ancestors for the introduction of this institution upon the continent 
of America, I am, for one, unwilling that the posterity of the present 
inhabitants of California and of New Mexico shall reproach us for 
doing just what we reproach Great Britain for doing to us. If the 
citizens of those territories choose to establish slavery, and if they 
come here with constitutions establishing slavery, I am for admitt- 
ing them with such provisions in their constitutions ; but then it will 
be their own work, and not ours, and their posterity will have to 
reproach them, and not us, for forming constitutions allowing the 
institution of slavery to exist among them. These are my views, sir, 
and I choose to express them ; and I care not how extensively or 
universally they are known." 

Hear him further ; he says : 

" So long as God allows the vital current to flow through my 
veins, I will never, never, never, by word or thought, by mind or 
will, aid in admitting one rood of free territory to the everlasting 
curse of human bondage." 

Blest is the memory of noble Harry of the West ! 

THE VOICE OF BENTON. 

In his " Thirty Years' View," Thomas H. Benton says : 

" My opposition to the extension of slavery dates further back than 
1844 — forty years further back ; and as this is a suitable time for a 
general declaration, and a sort of general conscience delivery, I will 
say that my opposition to it dates from 1804, when I was a student 
at law in the State of Tennessee, and studied the subject of African 
slavery in an American book — a Virginian book — Tucker's edition 
of Blackstone's Commentaries." 

Again, in a speech delivered in St. Louis, on the 3d of 
November, 1856, he says : 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 165 

" I look at white people and not at black ones ; I look to the peace 
and reputation of the race to which I belong. I look to the peace 
of this land — the world's last hope for a free government on the 
eartb. One of the occasions on which I saw Henry Clay rise higher 
than I thought I ever saw him before, was when in the debate on 
the admission of California, a dissolution was apprehended if slavery 
was not carried into this Territory, where it never was. Then Mr. 
Clay rising, loomed colossally in the Senate of the United States, as 
he rose declaring that for no earthly purpose, nb earthly object, could 
he carry slavery into places where it did not exist before. It was a 
great and proud day for Mr. Clay, toward the latter days of his life, 
aud if an artist could have been there to catch his expression as he 
uttered that sentiment, with its reflex on his face, and his counte- 
nance beaming with firmness of purpose, it would 'have been a glori- 
ous moment in which to transmit him to posterity — his countenance 
all alive and luminous with the ideas that beat in his bosom. That 
was a proud day. I could have wished that I had spoken the same 
words. I speak them now, telling you they were his, and adopting 
them as my own." 



THE VOICE OF MASON. 

Colonel Mason, a leading and distinguished member of the 
Convention that formed the Constitution, from Virginia, 
when the provision for prohibiting the importation of slaves 
was under consideration, said : 

" The present question concerns not the importing States alone, 
but the whole Union. Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. 
The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent 
the emigration of whites, who really enrich and strengthen a country. 
They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master 
of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven 
on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the 
next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes 
and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities. 11 



166 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 



THE VOICE OF MARSHALL. 

In a letter dated at Richmond, December 14, 1831, Chief 
Justice Marshall said : 

" Some of our cruisers, stationed on the coast of Africa, would, at 
the same time, interrupt the slave trade— a horrible traffic, detested 
by all good men— and would protect the vessels and commerce of the 
colony from pirates, who infest those seas. The power of the govern- 
ment to afford this aid is not, I believe, contested." 

THOMAS MARSHALL. 

In the Virginia legislature, in 1832, Mr. Marshall, of 
Fauquier, said : 

" Wherefore, then, object to slavery ? Because it is ruinous to the 
whites — retards improvements, roots out an industrious population, 
banishes the yeomanry of the country— deprives the spinner, the 
weaver, the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, of employment and 
support." 

THE VOICE OF MCDOWELL. 

In 1832, Gov. McDowell used this language in the Virginia 
legislature : 

" Who that looks upon this unhappy bondage of an unhappy peo- 
ple, in the midst of our society, and thinks of its incidents or issues, 
but weeps over it as a curse as great upon him who inflicts it as upon 
him who suffers it ? Sir, you may place the slave where you please— 
you may dry up, to your uttermost, the fountains of bis feelings, the 
springs of his thought— you may close upon his mind every avenue 
of knowledge, and cloud it over with artificial night— you may yoke 
him to your labors, as the ox, which liveth only to work and work- 
eth only to live — you may put him under any process which, with- 
out destroying his value as a slave, will debase and crush him as a 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 167 

rational being — you may do this, and the idea that he was horn to 
be free will survive it all. It is allied to his hope of immortality — it 
is the ethereal part of his nature which oppression cannot rend. It 
is a torch lit up in his soul by the hand of Deity, and never meant 
to be extinguished by the hand of man." 

THE VOICE OF IREDELL. 

In the debates of the North Carolina Convention, Mr. Ire- 
dell, afterward a Judge of the United States Supreme 
Court, said : 

" When the entire abolition of slavery takes place, it will be an 
event which must be pleasing to every generous mind, and every 
friend of human nature." 



THE VOICE OF WIRT. 

WilliamWirt, the accomplished lawyer and author (a native 
of Maryland, but in his manhood a resident of Virginia, where 
he became chancellor and district attorney), in his life of 
Patrick Henry, says : 

" Slavery was contrary to the laws of nature and of nations, and 
that the law of South Carolina, concerning seizing colored seamen, 

was unconstitutional Last and lowest, a feculum of 

beings called overseers — the most abject, degraded, unprincipled 
race — always cap in hand to the dons who employ tbem, and fur- 
nishing materials for their pride, insolence, and love of dominion." 

THE VOICE OF WYTHE. 

George Wythe, one of the signers of the Declaration of 
Independence, afterward chancellor in Virginia — as a gentle- 
man and statesman, one of the ornaments of his time — says : 



1G8 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

" Whenever one person claims to hold another in slavery, the onvs 
froban&i lies on the claimant. This sentiment is strongly incul- 
cated in our political catechism, the Bill of Rights, and accords with 
that self-evident principle which makes liberty the birth-right of 
every human being." 

THE VOICE OF PINKNEY. 

William Pinkney, of Maryland, in the House of Delegates 
in that State, in 1789, made several powerful arguments in 
favor of the abolition of slavery. Here follows a brief ex- 
tract from one of his speeches : 

"Iniquitous and most dishonorable to Maryland, is that dreary 
system of partial bondage which her laws have hitherto supported 
with a solicitude worthy of a better object, and her citizens, by their 
practice countenanced. Founded in a disgraceful traffic, to which 
the parent country lent its fostering aid, from motives of interest, 
but which even she would have disdained to encourage, had England 
been the destined mart of such inhuman merchandise, its continuance 
is as shameful as its origin. 

" I have no hope that the stream of general liberty will forever 
flow unpolluted through the mire of partial bondage, or that they 
who have been habituated to lord it over others, will not, in time, 
become base enough to let others lord it over them. If they resist, 
it will be the struggle of pride and selfishness, not of principle." 



THE VOICE OF LEIGH. 

In the legislature of Virginia, in 1832, Mr. Leigh said: 

"I thought till very lately that it was known to everybody that, 
during the Revolution, and for many years after, the abolition of 
slavery was a favorite topic with many of our ablest statesmen, who 
entertained with respect all the schemes which wisdom or ingenuity 
could suggest for its accomplishment." 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 169 



THE VOICE OF BOLLING. 

Philip A. Boiling, of Buckingham, a member of the legis- 
lature of Virginia, in 1832, said: 

"The time will come — and it may be sooner than many are wil- 
ling to believe — when this oppressed and degraded race cannot be 
held as they now are — when a change will be effected, abhorrent, 
Mr. Speaker, to you, and to the feelings of every good man. 

"The wounded adder will recoil, and sting the foot that tramples 
upon it. The day is fast approaching, when those who oppose all 
action upon this subject, and, instead of aiding in devising some fea- 
sible plan for freeing their country from an acknowledged curse, cry 
'■impossible,' 1 to every plan suggested, will curse their perverseness, 
and lament their folly." 



THE VOICE OF CHANDLER. 

Mr. Chandler, of Norfolk, member of the Virginia legisla- 
ture, in 1832, took occasion to say: 

"It is admitted, by all who have addressed this House, that slavery 
is a curse, and an increasing one. That it has been destructive to the 
lives of our citizens, history, with unerring truth, will record. That 
its future increase will create commotion, cannot be doubted." 



THE VOICE OF SUMMERS. 

Mr. Summers, of Kanawha, member of the legislature of 
Virginia, in 1832, said: 

"The evils of this system cannot be enumerated. It were unne- 
cessary to attempt it. They glare upon us at every step. When the 
owner looks to his wasted estate, he knows and feels them." 



170 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVEET. 

THE VOICE OF PRESTON. 

In the legislature of Virginia, in 1832, Mr. Preston said: 

" Sir, Mr. Jefferson, whose hand drew the preamhle to the Bill of 
Eights, has eloquently remarked that we had invoked for ourselves 
the benefit of a principle which we had denied to others. He saw 
and felt that slaves, as men, were embraced within this principle." 

THE VOICE OF BIRNEY. 

James G. Birney, of Kentucky, under whom the Abolition- 
ists first became a National Party, and for whom they voted 
for President in 1844, giving him 60,304 votes, says: 

"I allow not to human laws, be they primary or secondary, no 
matter by what numbers, or with what solemnities ordained, the 
least semblance of right to establish slavery, to make property of my 
fellow, created, equally with myself, in the image of God. Indivi- 
dually, or as political communities, men have no more right to enact 
slavery, than they have to enact murder or blasphemy, or incest or 
adultery. To establish slavery is to dethrone right, to trample on 
justice, the only true foundation of government. Governments exist 
not for the destruction of liberty, but for its defence ; not for the 
annihilation of men's rights, but their preservation. Do they incor- 
porate in their organic law the element of injustice ? — do they live 
by admitting it in practice? Then do they destroy their own foun- 
dation, and absolve all men from the duty of allegiance. Is any man 
so besotted as, for a moment, to suppose that the slaveholder has an 
atom of right to his slave; as that the slave has resting on him an 
atom of obligation to obey the laws that enslave him, that rob him 
of everything — of himself? No one ; else why do all just men of all 
countries rejoice when they hear that the oppressed of any country 
have achieved their liberty, at whatever cost to their tyrants?" 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 171 



THE YOICE OF DELAWARE. 

Strong anti-slavery sentiments had become popular in Dela- 
ware as early as 1785. With Maryland and Missouri, it may 
now be ranked as merely a Semi-slave State. Mr. McLane, 
a member of Congress from this State, in 1825, said: 

" I shall not imitate the example of other gentlemen by making 
professions of my love of liberty and abhorrence of slavery ; not, 
however, because I do not entertain them. I am an enemy to 
slavery." 

THE VOICE OF MARYLAND. 

Slavery has little vitality in Maryland. Baltimore, the 
greatest city of the South — greatest because freest — has a 
population of more than two hundred thousand souls, and 
yet less than three thousand of these are slaves. In spite of 
all the unjust and oppressive statutes enacted by the oligarchy, 
the non-slaveholders, Avho, with the exception of a small num- 
ber of slaveholding emancipationists, may in truth be said to 
be the only class of really respectable and patriotic citizens in 
the South, have wisely determined that their noble State shall 
be freed from the sin and the shame, the crime and the curse 
of slavery ; and in accordance with this determination, long 
since formed, they are giving every possible encouragement 
to free white labor, thereby, very properly, rendering the 
labor of slaves both unprofitable and disgraceful. The forma- 
tion of an Abolition Society in this State, in 1*789, was the 
result of the influence of the masterly speeches delivered in 
the House of Delegates, by the Hon. William Pinkney, whose 
undying testimony we have already placed on record. Nearly 
seventy years ago, this eminent lawyer and statesman declared 
to the people of America, that if they did not mark out the 



172 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

bounds of slavery, and adopt measures for its total extinc- 
tion, it would finally "work a decay of the spirit of liberty in 
the Free States." Further, he said that, " by the eternal 
principles of natural justice, no master in the State has a right 
to hold his slave in bondage a single hour." In 178V, Luther 
Martin, of this State, said : 

"Slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism, and has 
a tendency to destroy those principles on which it is supported, as it 
lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us to 
tyranny and oppression." 



THE VOICE OF VIRGINIA. 

After introducing the unreserved and immortal testimony 
of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and the other 
great men of the Old Dominion, against the system of Slavery, 
it may, to some, seem quite superfluous to back the cause of 
Freedom by arguments from other Virginia Abolitionists ; but 
this State, notwithstanding all her more modern manners and 
inhumanity, has been so prolific of just views and noble senti- 
ments, that we deem it eminently fit and proper to blazon 
many of them to the world as the redeeming features of her 
history. An Abolition Society was formed in this State in 
1791. In a memorial which the members of this Society pre- 
sented to Congress, they pronounced slavery " not only an 
odious degradation, but an outrageous violation of one of the 
most essential rights of human nature, and utterly repugnant 
to the precepts of the Gospel." A Bill of Rights, unanimously 
agreed upon by the Virginia Convention of June 12,1776, 
holds : 

" That all men are, by nature, equally free and independent ; 
"That Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 173 

benefit, protection, and security, of the People, Nation, or Commu- 
nity; 

" That elections of members to serve as representatives of the peo- 
ple in assembly ought to be free ; 

"That all men having sufficient evidence of permanent common 
interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of 
suffrage, and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property, for pub- 
lic uses, without their own consent or that of their representatives so 
elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, 
assented, for the public good ; 

" That the freedom of the Press is one of the greatest bulwarks of 
liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments ; 

"That no free government or the blessing of liberty can be pre- 
served to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, 
temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by a frequent recurrence to 
fundamental principles." 

The " Virginia Society for the Abolition of Slavery," or- 
ganized in 1791, addressed Congress in these words : 

"Your memorialists, fully aware that righteousness exalteth a 
nation, and that slavery is not Only an odious degradation, but an 
outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights of human 
nature, and utterly repugnant to the precepts of the Gospel, which 
breathes 'peace on earth and good will to men,' lament that a prac- 
tice so inconsistent with true policy and the inalienable rights of 
men, should subsist in so enlightened an age, and among a people 
professing that all mankind are, by nature, equally entitled to free- 
dom." 



THE VOICE OF NORTH CAROLINA, 

If the question, Slavery or No Slavery, could be fairly pre- 
sented for the decision of the legal voters of North Carolina 
at the next popular election, we believe that at least two 
thirds of them would deposit the No Slavery ticket. Perhaps 



174 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

one-fourth of the slaveholders themselves would vote it, for 
the slaveholders in this State are more moderate, decent, 
sensible, and honorable, than the slaveholders in either of the 
adjoining States, or the States further South ; and we know 
that many of them are heartily ashamed of the disreputable 
occupation of slaveholding and slave-breeding in which they 
are engaged, for we have frequently had the assurance from 
their own lips. As a matter of course, all the non-slaveholders, 
who are so greatly in the majority, would vote to suppress 
the degrading system, which has kept them so long in poverty 
and ignorance, with the exception of those who are complete 
automatons to the beck and call of their imperious lords and 
masters, the major-generals of the oligarchy. 

How long shall it be before the citizens of North Carolina 
shall have the privilege of expressing at the ballot-box their 
true sentiments with regard to this vexed question ? Why 
not decide it at the next general election ? Sooner or later, it 
must and will be decided — decided correctly, too — and the 
sooner the better. The first Southern State that abolishes 
slavery will do herself an immortal honor. God grant that 
North Carolina may be that State, and soon ! There is at 
least one plausible reason why this good old State should be 
the first to move in this important matter, and we will state 
it. On the 20th of May, 1775, just one year, one month and 
fourteen days prior to the adoption of the Jeffersonian Decla- 
ration of Independence, by the Continental Congress in Phila- 
delphia, July 4, 1776, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the authorship of which is generally attributed to 
Ephraim Brevard, was proclaimed in Charlotte, Mecklenburg 
County, North Carolina, and fully ratified in a second Con- 
vention of the people of said county, held on the 31st of the 
same month. And here, by the way, we may remark, that it 
is supposed Mr. Jefferson made use of this last-mentioned do- 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 175 

cument as the basis of his draft of the indestructible title-deed 
of our liberties. There is certainly an identicalness of lan- 
guage between the "two papers that is well calculated to 
strengthen this hypothesis. This, however, is a controversy 
about which we are but little concerned. For present pur- 
poses, it is, perhaps enough for us to know, that on the 20th 
of May, 1775, when trans-Atlantic tyranny could no longer be 
endured, North Carolina set her sister colonies almost valor- 
ous and praiseworthy example, and that they followed it. To 
her infamous slaveholding sisters of the South, it is now meet 
that she should set another noble example of decency, virtue, 
and independence. Let her at once inaugurate a policy of 
common justice and humanity — enact a system of equitable 
laws, having due regard to the rights and interests of all 
classes of persons, poor whites, negroes, and nabobs, and the 
surrounding States will ere long applaud her measures, and 
adopt similar ones for the governance of themselves. 

Another reason, and a cogent one, why North Carolina 
should aspire to become the first Free State of the South is 
this : The first Slave State that makes herself respectable by 
casting out the " mother of harlots," and by rendering enter- 
prise and industry honorable, will immediately receive a large 
accession of most worthy citizens from other States in the 
Union, and thus lay a broad foundation of permanent political 
power and prosperity. Intelligent white farmers from the 
Middle and New England States will flock to our more con- 
genial clime, eager to give thirty dollars per acre for the very 
lands that are now a drug in the market because nobody 
wants them at the rate of five dollars per acre ; an immediate 
and powerful impetus will be given to commerce, manufac- 
tures, and all the industrial arts ; science and literature will 
be revived, and every part of the State will reverberate with 
the triumphs of manual and intellectual labor. 



176 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

In a pecuniary point of view, we of North Carolina are, at 
this present time, worth less than either of the four adjoining 
States ; let us abolish slavery at the beginning of the next 
regular decade of years, and if our example is not speedily 
followed, we shall, on or before the 4th of July, 1876, be en- 
abled to purchase the whole of Virginia and South Carolina, 
including, perhaps, the greater part of Georgia. An exclu- 
sive lease of liberty for ten years would unquestionably make 
us the Empire State of the South. But we have no disposi- 
tion to debar others from the enjoyment of liberty, or from 
any other inalienable right ; we ask no special favor ; what we 
demand for ourselves we are willing to concede to our neigh- 
bors. Hereby we make application for a lease of Freedom for 
ten years ; shall Ave have it ? May God enable us to secure 
it, as we believe He will. We give fair notice, however, that 
if we get it for ten years, we shall, with the approbation of 
Heaven, keep it twenty — forty — a thousand — forever ! 

We transcribe the Mecklenburg Resolutions, which, it will 
be observed, acknowledge the " inherent and inalienable rights 
of man," and " declare ourselves a free and independent peo- 
ple, are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-govern- 
ing association, under the control of no power other than that 
of our God, and the general government of the Congress." 



MECKLENBURG DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 

As proclaimed in the town of Charlotte, North Carolina, 
May 20th, 1775, and ratified by the County of Mecklenburg, 
in Convention, May 31st, 1775 : 

" I. Resolved — That whosoever, directly or indirectly, abetted, or 
in any way, form or manner, countenanced the unchartered and 
dangerous invasion of our rights as claimed by Great Britain, is an 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 177 

enemy to this country, to America, and to the inherent and inalienable 
rights of man. 

"II. Resolved — That we the citizens of Mecklenburg County, do 
hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the 
mother country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to 
the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract or 
association with that nation, who have wantonly trampled on our 
rights and liberties, and inhumanly shed the blood of American 
patriots at Lexington. 

" III. Resolved — That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and 
independent people, are, and of right, ought to be, a sovereign and 
self-governing association, under the control of no power other than 
that of our God, and the general government of the Congress ; to the 
maintenance of which independence, we solemnly pledge to each 
other our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most 
sacred honor. 

"IV. Resolved — That as we now acknowledge the existence and 
control of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this county, 
we do hereby ordain and adopt, as a rule of life, all, each, and every 
of our former laws — wherein, nevertheless, the crown of Great 
Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immu- 
nities or authority therein." 

Had it not been for Slavery, which, with all its other blight- 
ing and degrading influences, stifles and subdues every noble 
impulse of the heart, this consecrated spot would long since 
have been marked by an enduring monument, whose grand 
proportions should bear witness that the virtues of a noble 
ancestry are gratefully remembered by an emulous and appre- 
ciative posterity. Yet, even as things are, we are not without 
genuine consolation. The star of hope and promise is begin- 
ning to beam brightly over the long-obscured horizon of the 
South ; and we are firm in the belief, that freedom, wealth, 
and magnanimity, will soon do justice to the memory of those 
fearless patriots, whose fair fame has been suffered to molder 

8* 



1<» SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

amidst the multifarious abominations of slavery, poverty, ig- 
norance and grovelling selfishness. 

In the Provincial Convention held hi North Carolina, hi 
August, 1774, in which there were sixty-nine delegates, repre- 
senting nearly every county in the province, it was — 

"Resolved — That we will not import any slave or slaves, or pur- 
chase any slave or slaves imported or brought iuto the Province by 
others, from any part of the world, after the first day of November 
nest." 

In Iredell's Statutes, revised by Martin, it is stated that, 

" In North Carolina, no general law at all was passed, prior to the 
Revolution, declaring who might be slaves." 

That there is no legal slavery in the Southern States, and 
that slavery nowhere can be legalized, any more than theft, 
arson or murder can be legalized, has been virtually admitted 
by some of the most profound Southern jurists themselves ; 
and Ave will here digress so far as to furnish the testimony of 
one or two eminent lawyers, not of North Carolina, upon 
this point. 

In the debate in the United States Senate, in 1850, on the 
Fugitive Slave Bill, Mr. Mason, of Virginia, objected to Mr. 
Dayton's amendment, providing for a trial by jury, because, 
said he — 

"A trial by jury necessarily carries with it a trial of the whole 
right, and a trial of the right to service will be gone into, according 
to all the forms of the court, in determining upon any other fact. 
Then, again, it is proposed, as a part of the proof to be adduced at 
the hearing, after the fugitive has been re-captured, that evidence 
shall be brought by the claimant to show that slavery is established 
in the State from which the fugitive has absconded. Now, this very 
thing, in a recent case in the city of New York, was required by one 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 179 

of the judges of that State, which case attracted the attention of the 
authorities of Maryland, and against which they protested. In that 
case the State judge went so far as to say that the only mode of 
proving it was by reference to the Statute book. Such proof is 
required in the senator's amendment ; and if he means by this that 
proof shall be brought that slavery is established by existing laws, it 
is impossible to comply with the requisition, for no such law can be 
produced, I apprehend, in any of the Slave States. I am not aware 
that there is a single State in which the institution is established by 
positive law." 

Judge Clarke, of Mississippi, says : 

" In this State the legislature have considered slaves as reason- 
able and accountable beings ; and it should be a stigma upon the 
character of the State, and a reproach to the administration of jus- 
tice, if the life of a slave could be taken with impunity, or if he 
could be murdered in cold blood, without subjecting the offender to 
the highest penalty known to the criminal jurisprudence of the 
country. Has the slave no rights, because he is deprived of his 
freedom ? He is still a human being, and possesses all those rights 
of which he is not deprived by the positive provisions of the law. 
The right of the master exists not by force of the law of nature or 
nations, but by virtue only of the positive law of the State." 

The Hon. Judge Ruffin, of North Carolina, says : 

" Arguments drawn from the well-established principles, which 
confer and restrain the authority of the parent over the child, the 
tutor over the pupil, the master over the apprentice, have been 
pressed on us. The court does not recognize their application ; there 
is no likeness between the cases; they are in opposition to each 
other, and there is an impassable gulf between them. The difference is 
that which exists between freedom and slavery, and a greater cannot 
be imagined. In the one, the end in view is the happiness of the 
youth, born to equal rights with that governor on whom the duty 
devolves of training the young to usefulness in a station which he 



180 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

is afterward to assume among freemen. To such an end, and with 
such a subject, moral and intellectual instruction seem the natural 
means, and, for the most part, they are found to suffice. Moderate 
force is superadded only to make the others effectual. If that fail, 
it is better to leave the party to his own headstrong passions, and 
tbe ultimate correction of the law, than to allow it to be immode- 
rately inflicted by a private person. With slavery it is far otherwise. 
The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public 
safety ; the subject, one doomed, in his own person and his posterity, 
to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make any- 
thing his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits. "What 
moral considerations shall be addressed to such a being to convince 
him, what it is impossible but that the most stupid must feel and 
know can never be true, that he is thus to labor upon a principle ot 
natural duty, or for the sake of his own personal happiness ? Such 
services can only be expected from one who has no will of his own ; 
who surrenders his will in implicit obedience to that of another. 
Such obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority 
over the body. There is nothing else which can operate to produce 
the effect. The power of the master must be absolute to render the 
submission of the slave perfect. I most freely confess my sense of 
the harshness of this proposition. I feel it as deeply as any man 
can ; and as a principle of moral right, every person in his retire- 
ment must repudiate it." 

An esteemed friend, a physician, who was born and bred 
in Rowan county, North Carolina, and who now resides 
there, informs us that Judge Gaston, who was one of the 
half dozen statesmen whom the South has produced since the 
days of the venerable fathers of the Republic, was an avowed 
abolitionist, and that he published an address to the people 
of North Carolina, delineating, in a masterly manner, the 
material, moral and social disadvantages of slavery. "Where 
is that address ? Has it been suppressed by the oligarchy ? 
The fact that slaveholders have, from time to time, made 
strenuous efforts to expunge the sentiments of Freedom 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 181 

which now adorn the works of nobler men than tne noble 
Gaston, may, perhaps, fully account for the oblivious state 
into which his patriotic effort seems to have fallen. 

Note. — Three or four months after the above was pub- 
lished — up to which time this work in its first form had 
passed through several editions — Prof. Hedrick had the 
kindness to hand us the address, delivered, many years ago, 
before the Literary Societies of the University of North 
Carolina, by 

Judge Gaston, who, with much force, says : 

" Disguise the truth as we may, and throw the blame where we 
will, it is slavery which, more than any other cause, keeps us back 
in the career of improvement. It stifles industry and represses enter- 
prise — it is fatal to economy and providence — it discourages skill — 
impairs our strength as a community, and poisons morals at the 
fountain head. How this evil is to be encountered, how subdued, is 
indeed a difficult and delicate inquiry, which this is not the time to 
examine, nor the occasion to discuss. I felt, however, that I could 
not discharge my duty, without referring to this subject, as one 
which ought to engage the prudence, moderation, and firmness of 
those who, sooner or later, must act decisively upon it." 

In the course of an oration which he delivered in 1830, 
Benjamin Swaim, an eminent lawyer of North Carolina, 

asks— 

"Is it nothing to us, that seventeen hundred thousand of the peo- 
ple of our country are doomed illegally to the most abject and vile 
slavery that was ever tolerated on the face of the earth ? Are 
Carolinians deaf to the piercing cries of humanity ? Are they insen- 
sible to the demands of justice ? Let any man of spirit and feeling 
for a moment cast his thoughts over the land of slavery — think of 
the nakedness of some, the hungry yearnings of others, the flowing 



182 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

tears and heaving sighs of parting relations, the wailings of lamenta- 
tion and woe, the bloody cut of the keen, lash, and the frightful 
scream that rends the very skies — and all this to gratify ambition, 
lust, pride, avarice, vanity and other depraved feelings of the human 
heart. Indeed the worst is not generally known. Were all the 
miseries, the horrors of slavery, to burst at once into view, a peal of 
sevenfold thunder could scarce strike greater alarm." 

From a small pamphlet entitled " An Address to the Peo- 
ple of North Carolina, on the Evils of Slavery," published by 
William Swaim, in Greensborough, N. C, in 1830 — -just 
thirty years ago — with the approval of Amos Weaver, 
" chairman of the committee appointed by the General Asso- 
ciation of' the Manumission Society of North Carolina, to 
draw up an address to the people of the State, and to report 
the same to the Board of Managers of the said society for 
publication" — we present the following just and seasonable 
extracts : 

" "We call upon the friends of humanity, of virtue, of patriotism, 
and above all, of religion, to awake to a sense of the many principles 
of injustice, inhumanity and irreligion which attend our system of 
slavery ; and to continue their protest against measures so unjust to 
the unfortunate African, and so disgraceful to the spirit and princi- 
ples of a free and religious community, until we shall succeed in 
rendering to all mankind both true and impartial justice ; by which 
alone can glorious liberty be rendered perpetual, and we be enabled 
to transmit freedom as an unsullied patrimony to posterity. . . . 

If we have been accustomed to look upon African slave-dealers 
with disgust, let us turn our attention homeward for a momeut, and 
see if we have not among ourselves, men of similar character. We 
doubt not, however, but many of those men engaged in the domestic 
blave trade have been accustomed to regard African slave-traders as 
very depraved and cruel men ; and are very unwilling to rank with 
them in point of character. But we hope they will do themselves the 
justice of entering calmly with us into an investigation of the prin- 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 183 

ciples and nature of the domestic slave trade, while we briefly con- 
trast it with the African slave trade. 

" And first, we would ask what is the primary object of the Afri- 
can slave-trader ? Gain, must, undoubtedly, be the just and only pro- 
per answer to this question. Now, permit us to ask the domestic 
slave-trader what is his primary object? The same answer must in- 
variably be given — gain. The desire of amassing wealth becomes the 
predominant desire ere he is prepared for this inhuman traffic ! Should 
the domestic slave-trader plead in extenuation of his conduct, that 
those negroes whom he buys and sells, were slaves before he bought 
or sold them, and can only be such afterward, and that in many cases 
their circumstances are really bettered by the exchange of masters ; 
all this will prove nothing in his favor, as it is the principles and 
motives existing in the heart, which, like mainsprings, exert a con- 
trolling influence over the man, in producing the actions of which 
we are speaking, and not the particular degree either of good or harm 
done to any individual thereby, which we are investigating. 

" But secondly, the African slave-traders obtain their subjects in any 
way that they can, without the least regard to the attachments or re- 
lationships either filial, parental, or conjugal, existing between the 
captured negro and those he is leaving behind him. In like manner, 
the domestic slave-trader purchases his subjects wherever he can ob- 
tain the best bargains, without regard to the condition of the slave, 
in relation to any of the above-mentioned particulars, and sells them 
again by the same rule. And although he does not crowd them down 
in the gloomy cells of a slave ship, yet he often loads the miserable 
creatures with irons in such a manner as to render their very exis- 
tence burdensome. It may, however, be objected to the African slave- 
traders, that they sometimes kidnap and bring away those who were 
free, without paying an equivalent for them. Nor can we entirely 
vindicate the character of the domestic slave-traders from this dis- 
grace of the human character, some of whom are at times too noto- 
riously guilty of this abomination, as we could make appear were it 
necessary, with but little inconvenience to ourselves. And although 
the instances of kidnapping in the history of the domestic slave trade 
are much more rare than in that of the foreign, yet we believe, and 



184 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

facts authorize the belief, that few have engaged in the former with 
a view of amassing wealth, hut have shown a disposition to obtain 
slaves in any way which the laws and existing circumstances might 
permit. And it is a shameful fact that more or less, annually, of the 
free negroes, chiefly children, are taken and sold into slavery. . . . 
"No circumstance or consideration whatever, can render unquali- 
fied and absolute slavery, consistent with that instinctive sense of 
right of which every man may find more or less in his own breast. 
We have impartially examined the evil in its origin, its progress, and 
its present state, as well as its future consequences ; and even in its 
mildest form, it shrinks from rational inspection — a monster of 
hideous deformity in its best feature." 

THE VOICE OP SOUTH CAROLINA. 

Poor South Carolina ! Folly is her nightcap ; fanaticism is 
her day-dream ; fire-eating is her pastime. She has lost her 
better judgment; the dictates of reason and philosophy have 
no influence upon her actions. Like the wife who is pitiably 
infatuated with a drunken, worthless husband, she still clings, 
with unabated love, to the cause of her shame, her misery, 
and her degradation. 

A Kentuckian has recently expressed his opinion of this 
State in the following language : 

" South Carolina is bringing herself irrecoverably into public con- 
tempt. It is impossible for any impartial lover of his country, for 
any just, thinking man, to witness her senseless and quenchless ma- 
lignity against the Union without the most immeasurable disgust and 
scorn. She is one vast hot-bed of disunion. Her people think and 
talk of nothing else. She is a festering mass of treason." 

In 1854, there were assessed for taxation in South Caro- 
lina : 

Acres of Land xi 289,359 

^ alued at $22,S36,874 

Average value per acre '. $1 32 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 185 

At the same time there were in New Jersey : 

Acres of Land 5,324,800 

Valued at $153,161,619 

Average value per acre $28 76 

We hope the slaveholders will look, first on that picture, 
and then on this ; from one or the other, or both, they may 
glean a ray or two of wisdom, which, if duly applied, will be 
of incalculable advantage to them and their posterity. We 
trust, also, that the non-slaveholding whites will view, with 
discriminating minds, the different fights and shades of these 
two pictures ; they are the parties most deeply interested ; 
and it is to them we look for the glorious revolution that is 
to result in the permanent establishment of Freedom over the 
last lingering ruins of Slavery. They have the power to re- 
trieve the fallen fortunes of South Carolina, to raise her up 
from the loathsome sink of iniquity into which slavery has 
plunged her, and to make her one of the most brilliant stars 
in the great constellation of States. AVhile their minds are 
occupied with other considerations, let them not forget the 
difference between twenty -eight dollars and seventy-six cents, 
the value of land per acre in New Jersey, which is a second- 
rate Free State, and one dollar and thirty -two cents, the value 
of land per acre in South Carolina, which is, par excellence, the 
model Slave State. The difference between the two sums is 
twenty-seven dollars and forty-four cents, which would amount 
to precisely two thousand seven hundred and forty-four dol- 
lars on every hundred acres. To present the subject in ano- 
ther form, the South Carolina tract of land, containing two 
hundred acres, is worth now only two hundred and sixty-four 
dollars, and is depreciating every day. Let slavery be abo- 
lished, and in the course of a few years, the same tract would 
be worth five thousand seven hundred and fifty-two dollars, 
with an upward tendency. At this rate, the increment of 



186 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

value on the total area of the State would soon amount to 
more than three times as much as the present estimated value 
of the slaves ! 

South Carolina has not always beeu, nor will she always 
continue to be, on the wrong side. From Ramsay's History 
of the §tate, we learn that, in 1774, she 

" Resolved — That his majesty's subjects in North America (without 
respect to* color or other accidents) are entitled to all the inherent 
rights and liberties of his natural-born subjects within the kingdom 
of Great Britain ; that it is their fundamental right, that no man 
should suffer in his person or property without a fair trial, and judg- 
ment given by his peers, or by the law of the land." 

During the Revolution, when Baron de Kalb met General 
Francis Marion, the former expressed amazement that so many 
" South Carolinians were running to take British protection." 
Marion replied : 

" The people of Carolina form two classes, the rich and the poor. 
The poor are very poor ; the rich, who have slaves to do all their 
work, give them no employment. Unsupported by the rich, they 
continue poor and low-spirited. The little they get is laid out in 
brandy, not in books and newspapers ; hence they know nothing of 
the comparative blessings of our country, or of the dangers which 
threaten it ; therefore they care nothing about it. The rich are gene- 
rally very rich ; afraid to stir lest the British should burn their houses, 
and carry off their negroes." 

After the Avar, he estimated that "poor Carolina lost, 
through her ignorance, $15,000,000 ; for ignorance begat tory- 
ism, ami toryism begat losses." In regard to the importance 
of educating the people, he said : 

" Look at the people of New England. Eeligion has taught them 
that God created men to be happy ; to be happy they must have vir- 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 187 

tue ; that virtue is not to be attained without knowledge ; nor know- 
ledge without instruction ; nor public instruction without free schools : 
nor free schools without legislative order." 

One of her early writers, under the nom de plume of Philo- 
demus, in a political pamphlet published in Charleston in 1 784, 
declares that : # 

" Such is the fatal influence of slavery on the human mind, that it 
almost wholly effaces from it even the boasted characteristic of 
rationality." 

The same writer, speaking of the particular interests of 
South Carolina, says : 

"It has been too common with us to search the records of other 
nations, to find precedents that may give sanction to our own errors, 
and lead us unwarily into confusion and ruin. It is our business to 
consult their histories, not with a view to tread right, or wrong, in 
their steps, but in order to investigate the real sources of the mis- 
chiefs that have befallen them, and to endeavor to escape the rocks 
which they have all unfortunately split upon. It is paying ourselves 
but a poor compliment, to say that we are incapable of profiting by 
others, and that, with all the information which is to be derived from 
their fatal experience, it is in vain for us to attempt to excel them. 
If, with all the peculiar advantages of our present situation, we are 
incapable of surpassing our predecessors, we must be a degenerate 
race indeed, and quite unworthy of those singular bounties of heaven, 
which we are so unskilled or undesirous to turn to our benefit." 

A recent number of " Frazer's Magazine " contains a well- 
timed and well- written article from the pen of William Henry 
Hurlbut of this State ; and from it we make the following 
extract : 

" As all sagacious observers of the operation of the system of 
slavery have demonstrated, the profitable employment of slave-labor 



188 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

is inconsistent with the development of agricultural science, and 
demands a continual supply of new and unexhausted soil. The slave- 
holder, investing his capital in the purchase of the laborers themselves, 
and not merely in soil and machines, paying his free laborers out of 
the profit, must depend for his continued and progressive prosperity 
upon the cheapness and facility with which he can transfer his slaves 
to fresfcand fertile lands. An enormous additional item, namely the 
price of slaves, being added to the cost of production, all other ele- 
ments of that cost require to be proportionably smaller, or profits 
fail." 

In an address delivered before the South Carolina Institute, 
in Charleston, November 20th, 1856, Mr. B. F. Perry, of 

Greenville, truthfully says : 

"It has been South Carolina's misfortune, in this utilitarian age, to 
have her greatest talents and most powerful energies directed to pur- 
suits which avail her nothing in the way of wealth and prosperity. 
In the first settlement of a new country, agricultural industry neces- 
sarily absorbs all the time and occupation of its inhabitants. They 
must clear the forests and cultivate the earth, in order to make their 
bread. This is their first consideration. Then the mechanical arts 
and .manufactures, and commerce, must follow in the footsteps of 
agriculture, to insure either individual or national prosperity. No 
people can be highly prosperous without them. No people ever have 
been. Agriculture, alone, will not make or sustain a great people. 
The true policy of every people is to cultivate the earth, manufacture 
its products, and send them abroad, in exchange for those comforts 
and luxuries, and necessaries, which their own country and their own 
industry cannot give or make. The dependence of South Carolina 
on Europe and the Northern States for all the necessaries, comforts 
and luxuries, which the mechanic arts afford, has, in fact, drained 
her of her wealth, and made her positively poor, when compared 
with her sister States of the Confederacy. It is at once mortifying 
and alarming, to see and reflect on our own dependence in the 
mechanic arts and manufactures, on strangers and foreigners. In the 
Northern States their highest talents and energy have been diversi- 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 189 

fied, and more profitably employed in developing the resources of 
the country, in making new inventions in the mechanic arts, and en- 
riching the community with science and literature, commerce and 
manufactures." 



THE VOICE OF GEORGIA. , 

Of the States strictly Southern, Georgia is, perhaps, the 
most thrifty. This prosperous condition of the State is 
mainly ascribable to her hundred thousand free white labor- 
ers — more than eighty-three thousand of whom are engaged 
in agricultural pursuits. In few other Slave States are the 
non-slaveholders so little under the domination of the oligar- 
chy. At best, however, even in the most liberal Slave States, 
the social position of the non-slaveholding whites is but one 
short step in advance of that of the negroes ; and as there is, 
on the part of the oligarchy, a constantly increasing desire 
and effort to usurp greater power, the more we investigate 
the subject the more fully are we convinced that nothing but 
the speedy and utter annihilation of slavery from the entire 
nation, can save the masses of white people in the Southern 
States from ultimately falling to a political level with the 
blacks — both occupying the most abject and galling condi- 
tion of servitude of which it is possible for the human mind 
to conceive. 

Gen. Oglethorpe, under whose management the Colony of 
Georgia was settled, in 1733, was bitterly opposed to the 
institution of slavery. In a letter to Granville Sharp, dated 
Oct. 13th, 1776, he says: 

"My friends and I settled the Colony of Georgia, and by charter 
were established trustees, to make laws, etc. "We determined not to 
suffer slavery there. But the slave merchants and their adherents 
occasioned U3 not only much trouble, but at last got the then govern- 



190 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

ment to favor them. "We would not suffer slavery (which is against 
the Gospel, as well as the fundamental law of England) to be autho- 
rized under our authority ; we refused, as trustees, to make a law 
permitting such a horrid crime. The government, finding the trus- 
tees resolved firmly not to concur with what they believed unjust, 
took away the charter by which no law could be passed without our 
consent." 

On the 12th of January, IV 75, in indorsing the proceedings 
of the first American Congress, among other resolutions, 
" the Representatives of the extensive District of Darien, in 
the Colony of Georgia," adopted the following : 

"5. To show the world that we are not influenced by any con- 
tracted or interested motives, but a general philanthropy for all man- 
kind, of whatever climate, language, or complexion, we hereby 
declare our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice 
of slavery in America (however the uncultivated state of our country 
or other specious arguments may plead for it), a practice founded in 
injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties (as well 
as lives), debasing part of our fellow creatures below men, and cor- 
rupting the virtue and morals of the rest; and is laying the basis of 
that liberty we contended for (and which we pray the Almighty to 
continue to the latest posterity), upon a very wrong foundation. We 
therefore resolve, at all times, to use our utmost endeavors for the 
manumission of our slaves in this Colony, upon the most safe and 
equitable footing for the masters and themselves." 

The Hon. Mr. Reid, of this State, in a speech delivered in 
Congress, Feb. 1, 1820, says: 

" I am not the panegyrist of slavery. It is an unnatural state, a 
dark cloud, which obscures half the lustre of our free institutions. 
For my own part, though surrounded by slavery from my cradle to 
the present moment, yet — 

" ' I hate the touch of servile hands, 

I loathe the slaves who cringe around.' " 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 191 

As an accompaniment to those lines, he might have uttered 
these : 

" I would not have a slave to till my ground ; 
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, 
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth 
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned." 

Thus have we presented a comprehensive summary of the 
most unequivocal and irrefragable testimony of the South 
against the iniquitous system of human slavery. What more 
can we say ? What more can we do ? We might fill a folio 
volume with similar extracts ; but we must forego the task ; 
the remainder of our space must be occupied with other argu- 
ments. In the foregoing excerpts is revealed to us, in lan- 
guage too plain to be misunderstood, the important fact that 
every truly great and good man the South has ever produced, 
has, with hopeful confidence, looked forward to the time 
when this entire Continent shall be redeemed from the crime 
and the curse of slavery. Our noble self-sacrificing forefathers 
have performed their part, and performed it well. They have 
laid us a foundation as enduring as the earth itself; in their 
dying moments they admonished us to carry out their designs 
in the upbuilding and completion of the superstructure. Let 
us obey their patriotic injunctions. 

From each of the six original Southern States we have 
introduced the most ardent aspirations for Liberty — the most 
positive condemnations of Slavery. From each of the nine 
Slave States which have been admitted into the Union since 
the organization of the General Government, we could intro- 
duce, from several of their wisest and best citizens, anti-slavery 
sentiments equally as strong and convincing as those that 
emanated from the great founders of our movement — Wash- 
ington, Jefferson, Madison, Patrick Henry and the Randolphs. 
As we have already remarked, however, the limits of this 



192 SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 

chapter will not admit of the introduction or additional testi- 
mony from either of the old or of the new Slave States. 

The reader will not fail to observe that, in presenting these 
solid abolition doctrines of the South, we have been careful 
to make such quotations as triumphantly refute, in every par- 
ticular, the more specious sophistries of the oligarchy. 

The mention of the illustrious names above, reminds us of 
the fact, that many of the party newspapers, whose venal col- 
umns are eternally teeming with vituperation and slander, 
have long assured us that the Whig ship was to be steered 
by the Washington rudder, that the Democratic bark was to 
sail with the Jefferson compass, and that the Know-Nothing 
brig was to carry the Madison chart. Imposed upon by 
these monstrous falsehoods, we have, from time to time, been 
induced to engage passage on each of these corrupt and rick- 
ety old hulks ; but, in every instance, we have been basely 
swamped in the sea of slavery, and are alone indebted for our 
lives to the kindness of Heaven and the art of swimming. 
Washington the founder of the Whig party ! Jefferson the 
founder of the Democratic party ! Voltaire the founder of 
Christianity ! How absurd ! God forbid that man's heart 
should always continue to be the citadel of deception — that 
he should ever be to others the antipode of what he is to him- 
self. 

There is now in this country but one well-organized party 
that promises, in good faith, to put in practice the principles 
of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and the other venerable 
Fathers of the Republic — the Republican party. To this 
party we pledge unswerving allegiance, so long as it shall 
continue to pursue the statism advocated by the great politi- 
cal prototypes above-mentioned, but no longer. We believe 
it is, as it ought to be, the desire, the determination, and the 
destiny of this party, to give the death-blow to slavery ; should 



SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY. 193 

future developments prove the party at variance with this 
belief — a belief, by the by, which it has recently inspired in 
the breasts of little less than one and a half million of the 
most intelligent and patriotic voters in America — we shall 
shake oft* the dust of our feet against it, and join one that 
will, in a summary manner, extirpate the intolerable griev- 
ance. 



CHAPTER IV. 

« 

NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 

Slavery must fall, because it stands in direct hostility to all the grand move- 
ments, principles, and reforms of opr age, because it stands in the way of an 
advancing world. One great idea stands out amidst the discoveries and im- 
provements of modern times. It is, that man is not to exercise arbitrary, ir- 
responsible power over man. To restrain power, to divide and balance it, to 
create responsibility for its just use, to secure the individual against its abuse, 
to substitute law for private will, to shield the weak from the strong, to give 
to the injured the means of redress, to set a fence round every man's property 
and rights, in a word, to secure liberty — such, under various expressions, is 
the great object on which philosophers, patriots, philanthropists, have long 
fixed their thoughts and hopes. — Channino. 

The best evidence that can be given of the enlightened 
patriotism and love of liberty in the Free States, is the fact 
that, at the Presidential election in 185G, they polled thirteen 
hundred thousand votes for the Republican candidate, John 
C. Fremont. This fact of itself seems to preclude the ne- 
cessity of strengthening our cause with the individual testi- 
mony of even their greatest men. Having, however, adduced 
the most cogent and conclusive anti-slavery arguments from 
the Washingtons, the Jeflersons, the Madisons, the Ran- 
dolphs, and the Clays of the South, we shall now proceed to 
enrich our pages with gems of Liberty from the Franklins, the 
Hamiltons, the Jays, the Adamses, and the Websters of the 
North. Too close attention cannot be paid to the words of 
wisdom which we have extracted from the works of these 
truly eminent and philosophic statesmen. We will first 
listen to 

104 



NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 195 



THE VOICE OF FRANKLIN. 

Dr. Franklin was the first president of " The Pennsylvania 
Society " for promoting the Abolition of Slavery ; and it is now 
generally conceded that this was the first regularly organized 
American Abolition Society — it having been formed as early 
as 1774, while we were yet subjects of the British Government. 
In 1790, in the name and on behalf of this Society, Dr. Frank- 
lin, who was then within a few months of the close of his fife, 
drafted a memorial " to the Senate and House of Representa- 
tives of the United States," in which he said : 

"Your memorialists, particularly engaged in attending to the dis- 
tresses arising from slavery, believe it to be their indispensable duty 
to present this subject to your notice. Tbey have observed, with 
real satisfaction, that many important and salutary powers are vested 
in you, for ' promoting the welfare and securing the blessings of lib- 
erty to the people of the United States ,' and as they conceive that 
these blessings ought rightfully to be administered without distinc- 
tion of color, to all descriptions of people, so they indulge them- 
selves in the pleasing expectation that nothing which can be done 
for the relief of the unhappy objects of their care, will be either 
omitted or delayed. 

" From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the portion, 
and is still the birthright of all men, and influenced by the strong 
ties of humanity and the principles of their institution, your memo- 
rialists conceive themselves bound to use all justifiable endeavors to 
loosen the bonds of slavery, and promote a general enjoyment of the 
blessings of freedom. Under these impressions, they earnestly entreat 
your attention to the subject of slavery ; that you will be pleased to 
countenance the restoration to liberty of those unhappy men, who, 
alone, in this land of freedom, are degraded into perpetual bondage, 
and who, amid the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning 
in servile subjection ; that you will devise means for removing this 
inconsistency of character from the American people ; that you will 



196 NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 

promote mercy and justice toward this distressed race ; and that you 
will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discourag- 
ing every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow men." 

On another occasion, he says : 

"Slavery is an atrocious debasement of human nature." 

THE VOICE OP HAMILTON. 

Alexander Hamilton, the brilliant statesman and financier, 
tells us that — 

" The sacred rights of mankind are not to he rummaged for among 
old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sun- 
beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity 
itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." 

Again, in 1*774, addressing himself to an American Tory, 
lie says : 

"The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms, and false 
reasonings, is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. 
"Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never 
entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to equal 
privileges. You would be convinced that natural liberty is the gift 
of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race ; and that civil 
liberty is founded on that." 

THE VOICE OF JAY. 

John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States under 
the Constitution of 1789, in a letter to the Hon. Elias Boudi- 
not, dated November 17, 1819, says : 

"Little can be added to what has been said and written on the 



NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 197 

subject of slavery. I concur in the opinion that it ought not to be 
introduced nor permitted in any of the new States, and that it ought 
to be gradually diminished and finally abolished in all of them. 

" To me, the constitutional authority of the Congress to prohibit 
the migration and importation of slaves into any of the States, does 
not appear questionable. 

" The first article of the Constitution specifies the legislative 
powers committed to the Congress. The 9th section of that article 
has these words : ' The migration or importation of such persons as 
any of the now-existing States shall think proper to admit, shall not 
be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808, but a tax or 
duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars 
for each person.' 

" I understand the sense and meaning of this clause to be, that the 
power of the Congress, although competent to prohibit such migra- 
tion and importation, was to be exercised with respect to the then 
existing States, and them only, until the year 1808, but the Congress 
wore at liberty to make such prohibitions as to any new State, which 
might, in the mean time, be established. And further, that from and 
after that period, they were authorized to make such prohibitions as 
to all the States, whether new or old. 

" It will, I presume, be admitted, that slaves were the persons 
intended. The word slaves was avoided, probably on account of the 
existing toleration of slavery, and its discordancy with the principles 
of the Revolution, and from a consciousness of its being repugnant 
to the following positions in the Declaration of Independence : ' "We 
hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal ; 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness." 

In a previous letter, written from Spain, whither he had 
been appointed as minister plenipotentiary, he says, speaking 
of the abolition of slavery : 

" Till America comes into this measure, her prayers to Heaven 
will be impious. This is a strong expression, but it is just, I believe 



198 NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 

that God governs the world, and I believe it to be a maxim in His, 
as in our courts, that those who ask for equity ought to do it." 



WILLIAM JAY. 

The Hon. William Jay, a noble son of Chief Justice John 
Jay, says : 

" A crisis has arrived in which we must maintain our rights, or 
surrender them forever. I speak not to abolitionists alone, but to 
all who value the liberty our fathers achieved. Do you ask what 
we have to do with slavery ? Let our muzzled presses answer — let 
the mobs excited against us by the merchants and politicians answer, 
let the gag-laws threatened by our governors and legislatures answer, 
let the conduct of the National Government answer." 

THE VOICE OF ADAMS. 

From the Diary of John Quincy Adams, " the old man 
eloquent," we make the following extract : • 

" It is among the evils of slavery, that it taints the very sources 
of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice ; 
for what can be more false and more heartless than this doctrine, 
which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon 
the color of the skin ? It perverts human reason, and induces men 
endowed with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned 
by the Christian religion ; that slaves are happy and contented in 
their condition; that between master and slave there are ties of 
mutual attachment and affection ; that the virtues of the master are 
refined and exalted by the degradation of the slave, while at the 
same time they vent execrations upon the slave trade, curse Britain 
for having given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of 
crimes, for the terror of the example, and writhe in agonies of fear 
at the very mention of human rights as applicable to men of color." 



NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 199 



THE VOICE OP WEBSTER. 

In a speech which he delivered at Niblo's Garden, in the 
city of New York, on the 15th of March, 1837, Daniel Web- 
ster, the Great expounder of the Constitution, said : 

" On the general question of slavery, a great part of the commu- 
nity is already strongly excited. The subject has not only attracted 
attention as a question of politics, but it has struck a far deeper one 
ahead. It has arrested the religious feeling of the country, it has 
taken strong hold on the consciences of men. He is a rash man, 
indeed, and little conversant with human nature, and especially has 
he an erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this coun- 
try, who supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or 
despised. It will assuredly cause itself to be respected. But to 
endeavor to coin it into silver, or retain its free expression, to seek 
to compress and confine it, warm as it is, and more heated as such 
endeavors would inevitably render it — should this be attempted, I 
know nothing, even in the Constitution or Union itself, which might 
not be endangered by the explosion which might follow." 

When discussing the Oregon Bill in 1848, he said: 

" I have made up my mind, for one, that under no circumstances 
will I consent to the further extension of the area of slavery in the 
United States, or to the further increase of slave representation in 
the House of Representatives." 

Under date of February 15th, 1850, in a letter to the Rev. 
Mr. Furness, he says : 

" From my earliest youth I have regarded slavery as a great moral 
and political evil. I think it unjust, repugnant to the natural equality 
of mankind, founded only in superior power ; a standing and perma- 
nent conquest by the stronger over the weaker. All pretence of de- 
fending it on the ground of different races, I have ever condemned. 



200 NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 

I have even said that if the black race is weaker, that is a reason 
against, not for, its subjection and oppression. In a religious point 
of view, I have ever regarded it, and even spoken of it, not as subject 
to any express denunciation, either in the Old Testament or the New, 
but as opposed to the whole spirit of the Gospel and to the teachings 
of Jesus Christ. The religion of Jesus Christ is a religion of kind- 
ness, justice, and brotherly love. But slavery is not kindly affection- 
ate ; it does not seek another's, and not its own ; it does not let the 
oppressed go free. It is, as I have said, but a continual act of oppres- 
sion. But then, such is the influence of a habit of thinking among 
men, and such is the influence of what has been long established, that 
even minds, religiously and tenderly conscientious, such as would 
be shocked by any single act of oppression, in any single exercise of 
violence and unjust power, are not always moved by the reflection 
that slavery is a continual and permanent violation of human rights." 

While delivering a speech at Buffalo, in the State of New 
York, in the summer of 1851, only about twelve months prior 
to his decease, he made use of the following emphatic words : 

'•'I never would consent and never have consented, that there 
should be one foot of slave territory beyond what the old thirteen 
States had at the formation of the Union. Never, never." 



NOAH "WEBSTER. 

Noah Webster, the great American vocabulist, says : 

" That freedom is the sacred right of every man, whatever be his 
color, who has not forfeited it by some violation of municipal law, is 
a truth established by God himself, in the very creation of human 
beings. No time, no circumstance, no human power or policy can 
change the nature of this truth, nor repeal the fundamental laws of 
society, by which every man's right to liberty is guaranteed. The 
act of enslaving men is always a violation of those great primary 
laws of society, by which alone, the master himself holds every par- 
ticle of his own freedom." 



NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 201 



THE VOICE OP CLINTON. 

De Witt Clinton, the father of the great system of inter- 
nal improvements in the State of New York, speaking of 
despotism in Europe, and of slavery in America, asks : 

"Have not prescription and precedent — patriarchal dominion — 
divine right of kings and masters, been alternately called in to sanc- 
tion the slavery of nations ? And would not all the despotisms of the 
ancient and modern world have vanished into air, if the natural 
equality of mankind had been properly understood and practised? 

. . . . This declares that the same measure of justice ought 
to be measured out to all men, without regard to adventitious ine- 
qualities, and the intellectual and physical disparities which proceed 
from inexplicable causes." 



THE VOICE OP WARREN. 

Major General Joseph Warren, one of the truest patriots 
of the Revolution, and the first American officer of rank that 
fell in our contest with Great Britain, says : 

" That personal freedom is the natural right of every man, and that 
property, or an exclusive right to dispose of what he has honestly 
acquired by his own labor, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths 
that common sense has placed beyond the reach of contradiction. And 
no man, or body of men, can, without being guilty of flagrant injus- 
tice, claim a right to dispose of the persons or acquisitions of any other 
man or body of men, unless it can be proved that such a right has 
arisen from some compact between the parties, in which it has been 
explicitly and freely granted." 

Otis Hancock, Ames, and others, should he heard, but for 
lack of space. Volumes upon volumes might be filled with 
extracts similar to the above, from the works of the deceased 

9* 



202 NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 

statesmen and sages of the North, who, while living, proved 
themselves equal to the task of exterminating from their own 
States the matchless curse of human slavery. Such are the 
men who, though no longer with us in the flesh, " still live." 
A living principle — an immortal interest — have they, invested 
in every great and good work that distinguishes the Free 
States. The railroads, the canals, the telegraphs, the factories, 
the fleets of merchant vessels, the magnificent cities, the sci- 
entific modes of agriculture, the unrivalled institutions of 
learning, and other striking evidences of progress and im- 
provement at the North, are, either directly or indirectly, the 
offspring of their gigantic intellects. "When, if ever, commerce, 
and manufactures, and agriculture, and great enterprises, and 
truth, and liberty, and justice, and magnanimity, shall have 
become obsolete terms, then their names may possibly be for- 
gotten, but not till then. 

An army of brave and worthy successors — champions of 
Freedom now living, have the illustrious forefathers of the 
North, in the persons of Garrison, Greeley, Giddings, Goodell, 
Grow, and Gerrit Smith ; in Seward, Sumner, Stowe, Ray- 
mond, Parker, and Phillips ; in Beecher, Banks, Burlingame, 
Bryant, Hale, and Hildreth ; in Emerson, Dayton, Thompson, 
Tappan, King, and Cheeverj in Whittier, Wilson, Wade, 
Wayland, Weed, and Burleigh. These are the men whom, 
in connection with their learned and eloquent compatriots, 
the Everetts, the Bancrofts, the Prescotts, the Chapins, the 
Longfellows, and the Danas, future historians, if faithful to 
their calling, will place on record as America's true statesmen, 
literati, preachers, philosophers, and philanthropists, of the pre- 
sent age. 

In this connection, however, it may not be amiss to remark 
that the Homers, the Platos, the Bacons, the Newtons, the 
Shakspeares, the Miltons, the Blackstones, the Cuviers, the 



NORTHERN TESTIMONY. 203 

Humboldts, and the Macaulays of America, have not yet been 
produced ; nor, in our humble judgment, will they be, until 
Slavery shall have been overthrown, and Freedom established 
in the States of "Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Upon 
the soil of those States, when free, or on other free soil crossed 
by about the same degrees of latitude, and not distant from 
the Appalachian chain of mountains, will, we believe, be nur- 
tured into manhood, in the course of one or two centuries, 
perhaps, as great men as those mentioned above — greater, 
possibly, than any that have ever yet lived. Whence their 
ancestors may come, whether from Europe, from Asia, from 
Africa, from Oceanica, from North or South America, or from 
the islands of the sea, or whatever honorable vocation they 
may now be engaged in, matters nothing at all. For aught 
we know, their great-grandfathers are now humble artisans 
in Maine, or moneyed merchants in Massachusetts ; illiterate 
poor whites in Mississippi, or slave-driving lordlings in South 
Carolina ; frugal farmers in Michigan, or millionaires in Illi- 
nois ; daring hunters in the Rocky Mountains, or metal-diggers 
in California ; peasants in France, or princes in Germany — no 
matter where, or what, the scope of country above-mentioned 
is, in our opinion, destined to be the birthplace of their illus- 
trious offspring — the great savans of the New World, con- 
cerning whom let us console ourselves with the hope that they 
are not buried deeply in the matrix of the future. 



CHAPTER V. 

TESTIMONT OF THE NATIONS. 

There is a law above all the enactments of human codes, the same through- 
out the world, the same in all times ; it is the law written by the finger of God 
on the hearts of men ; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men 
despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indig- 
nation the wild and guilty phantasy that man can hold property in man. — 
Brougham. 

Slavery, in all its forms, in all its degrees, is a violation of divine law, and a 
degradation of human nature. — Brissot. 

Without doubt, Slavery is the greatest of all the evils which have afflicted 
mankind. — Hujtboldt. 

To the true friends of freedom throughout the world, it is 
a pleasing thought, and one which, by being communicated 
to others, is well calculated to universalize the principles of 
liberty, that the great heroes, statesmen, and sages, of all 
ages and nations, ancient and modern, who have ever had oc- 
casion to speak of the institution of human slavery, have en- 
tered their most unequivocal and positive protests against it. 
To say that they disapproved of the system would not be 
sufficiently exjjressive of the titter detestation with which they 
uniformly regarded it. That they abhorred it as the vilest 
invention that the Evil One has ever assisted bad men to con- 
coct, is quite evident from the very tone and construction of 
their language. 

Having with much pleasure and profit heard the testimony 
of America, through her representative men, we will now hear 
that of other nations, through their representative men— 

204 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 205 

t 

doubting not that we shall be more than remunerated for our 
time and trouble. We will first listen to 



THE VOICE OF ENGLAND. 

In the case of James Somerset, a negro who had been kid- 
napped in Africa, transported to Virginia, there sold into 
slavery, thence carried to England, as a waiting-boy, and 
there induced to institute proceedings against his master for 
the recovery of his freedom, 

mansfield says : 

"The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of 
being introduced on any reasons moral or political, but only by posi- 
tive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, 
and time itself whence it was created, are erased from the memory. 
It is so odious that nothing can be sufficient to support it but positive 
law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the de- 
cision, I cannot say that this case is allowed or approved by the law 
of England, and, therefore, the black must be discharged." 



wilbekforce says : 

"It is the prerogative of slavery to separate from evil its concomi- 
tant good, and to engender discordant mischiefs ; it robs war of its 
generosity ; it deprives peace of its security. Never before was a 
system so big with wickedness or cruelty ; in whatever part of it you 
direct your view, the eye finds no comfort, no satisfaction, no relief. 
You have the vices of polished society, without its knowledge or its 
comforts, and the evils of barbarism, without its simplicity. Its rav- 
ages are constant and indiscriminate. No age, no sex, no rank, no 
condition is exempt from the fatal influence of this wide-wasting ca- 
lamity ! It is, indeed, the full measure of pure, unmixed, unsophis> 



206 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 

ticated wickedness ; and, scorning all competition or comparison, it 
stands ■without a rival in the secure, undisputed possession of its de- 
testable preeminence." 



' MACAULAY says : 

"It is neither on facts nor on arguments that slavery seems now 
to depend for protection. It neither doubles, nor stands at bay. It 
has neither the ingenuity of the hare, nor the intrepidity of the lion. 
It defends itself, like a hunted polecat, by the loathsomeness with 
which it taints the atmosphere around it ; and hopes to escape, by 
disgusting those whom it can neither weary nor subdue. . . . 
The friends of Humanity and Freedom have often boasted, with hon- 
est pride, that the wise and good of hostile sects and factions seemed, 
when slavery or the slave trade was in question, to forget their mu- 
tual antipathies : that the introduction of this subject was to such 
men what the proclamation of a crusade was to the warriors of the 
dark ages — a signal to suspend all their petty disputes, and to array 
themselves under the same holy banner, against the same accursed 
enemy. In this respect the slave-drivers are now even with us. 
They, too, may boast that, if our case has received support from 
honest men of all religious and political parties, theirs has tended, in 
as great a degree, to combine and conciliate every form of violence 
and illiberality." 

locke says : 

" Slavery is so vile, so miserable a state of man, and so directly 
opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is 
hard to be convinced that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, 
should plead for it." 

Again, he says : 

" Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all 
men, yet every man has a property in his own person ; this nobody 
has a right to but himself." 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 207 

In her speech at the opening of Parliament, on the 3d of 
February, 1859, 

queen victoeia said : 

"I have great satisfaction in announcing to you that the Emperor 
of the French has abolished a system of negro emigration from the 
coast of Africa, against which, as unavoidably tending, however 
guarded, to the encouragement of the slave trade, my government 
has never ceased to address to his Imperial Majesty its most earnest 
but friendly representations. This wise act on the part of his Impe- 
rial Majesty induces me to hope that the negotiations now in pro- 
gress at Paris may tend to the total abandonment of the system, and 
to the substitution of a duly regulated supply of free labor." 



pitt says : 
" It is injustice to permit slavery to remain for a single hour." 

rox says : 

" With regard to a regulation of slavery, my detestation of its ex- 
istence induces me to know no such thing as a regulation of robbery, 
and a restriction of murder. Personal freedom is a right of which 
he who deprives a fellow-creature is criminal in so depriving him, 
and he who withholds is no less a criminal in withholding." 

Speaking in Parliament against the slave trade, 

huddlestone remarked : 

"That a curse attended this trade even in the mode of defending 
it. By a certain fatality, none but the vilest arguments were brought 
forward, which corrupted the very persons who used them. Every 
one of these was built on the narrow ground of interest, of pecuniary 
profit, of sordid gain, in opposition to every motive that had reference 
to humanity, justice and religion, or to that great principle which 
comprehended them all." 



208 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 



kowland hill says : 

" Slavery is made up of every crime that treachery, cruelty and 
murder can invent ; and men-stealers are the very worst of thieves. 
What a universal uproar it -would make in this land if hut one poor 
child were kidnapped from his parents ! and yet this kidnapping is a 
regular practice among professing Christians ! These are the people 
whom the^scripture describes as being past feeling. The most kna- 
vish tricks are practised by these dealers in human flesh : and if the 
slaves think of our general character, they must suppose that Christ- 
ians are Devils, and that Christianity was forged in Hell. • • * * 
What a dishonor in us to carry on such an abominable traffic, and to 
attempt to vindicate or even to palliate it, when every principle be- 
longing to it is founded upon incurable injustice. The horrid busi- 
ness of slavery, in the whole of its establishment, is founded on the 
mammon of unrighteousness, on a selfish love of the world ; and the 
result of this infernal traffic is, a regular- system of wholesale licensed 
thievery and murder." 

SHAKSPEARE SayS .' 

"Liberty! Freedom ! Tj-ranny is dead ! — 
Eun hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets ; 
Some to the common pulpits, and cry out, 
Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement." 

Again, he says : 

It is the curse of kings to be attended 

By slaves, that take their humors for a warrant 

To break within the bloody house of life, 

And, on the winking of authority, 

To understand a law; to know the meaning 

Of dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frowns 

More upon humor than advised respect." 

Again: 

'' A man is master of his liberty." 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 209 

Again: 

"Heaven will one day free ns from this slavery." 

cowper says : 

" Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs 
• Eeceive our air, that moment they are free. 

They touch our country and their shackles fall. 
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud 
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then, 
And let it circulate through every vein 
Of all your empire, that where Britain's power 
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too." 

milton asks: 

" "Where is the beauty to see, 
Like the sun-brilliant brow of a nation when free ?" 

Again he exclaims : 

" execrable son, so to aspire 
Above his brethren, to himself assuming 
Authority usurp'd, from God not given : 
He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, 
Dominion absolute ; that right we hold 
By his donation ; but man over men 
He made not lord ; such title to himself 
Reserving, human left from human free.' 

Again, he says : 

"If our fathers promised for themselves, to make themselves 
slaves, they could make no such promise for us." 

Again : 

" Since, therefore, the law is chiefly right reason, if we are bound 
to obey a magistrate as a minister of God, by the very same reason 
and the very same law, we ought to resist a tyrant, and minister of 
the devil." 



210 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 

dk. johnson says: 

" No man is, by nature, the property of another. The rights of 
nature must be some way forfeited before they can justly be taken 
away." 

dr price says : 

" If you have a right to make another man a slave, he has a right* 
to make you a slave." 

HARRIET MARTINEAU Says: 

" Where a man is allowed the possession of himself, the purchaser 
of his labor is benefited by the vigor of his mind through the service 
Of his limbs : where man is made the possession of another, the pos- 
sessor loses at once and forever all that is most valuable in that for 
which he has paid the price of crime." 

blackstone says : 

" If neither captivity nor contract can, by the plain law of nature 
and reason, reduce the parent to a state of slavery, much less can 
they reduce the offspring." 

Again, he says ; 

" The primary aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoy- 
ment of those absolute rights which were vested in them by the 
immutable laws of nature. Hence it follows that the first and pri- 
mary end of human laws is to maintain those absolute rights of 
individuals." 

Again : 

"If any human law shall allow or require us to commit crime, we 
are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both 
the natural and divine." 

coke says : 

" What, the Parliament doth, shall be holden for naught, whenever 
it shall enact that which is contrary to the rights of nature." 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 211 

hampden says : 

" The essence of all law is justice. What is not justice is not law ; 
and what is not law ought not to be obeyed." 

HARRINGTON SayS : 

"All men naturally are equal; for though nature with a noble 
variety has made different features and lineaments of men, yet as to 
freedom, she has made every one alike, and given them the same 
desires." 

fortescue says : 

" Those rights which God and nature have established, and which 
are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not 
the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man 
than they are ; neither do they receive any additional streugth when 
declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, 
no human power has any authority to abridge or destroy them, 
unless the owner himself shall commit some act that amounts to a 
forfeiture." 

And again : 

" The law, therefore, which supports slavery and opposes liberty, 
must necessarily be condemned as cruel, for every feeling of human 
nature advocates liberty. Slavery is introduced by human wicked- 
ness, but God advocates liberty, by the nature which he has given 
to man." 

THE VOICE OF IRELAND. 

burke says : 

""Slavery is a state so improper, so degrading, and so ruinous to 
the feelings and capacities of human nature, that it ought not to be 
suffered to exist." 

curran says: 

" I speak in the spirit of British law, which makes liberty com- 



212 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 

mensurate with and inseparable from British soil': which proclaims 
even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he steps his foot 
on British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy and 
consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter 
in what language his doom may have been pronounced ; no matter 
what complexion, incompatible with freedom, an Indian or African 
sun may have burnt upon him ; no matter in what disastrous battle 
his liberty may have been cloven down ; no matter with what solem- 
nities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery, the 
moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god 
sink together in the dust ; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty ; 
and he stands redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled by the irre- 
sistible genius of Universal Emancipation." 

O'CONNELL. 

Under date of Oct. 11, 1843, in his reply to the Address of 
the Cincinnati Irish Repeal Association, Daniel O'Connell, 
the great Irish Liberator, says — and we would respectfully 
commend his sayings to the careful consideration of Mr. 
Charles O'Conor, of New York — 

" We are lost in utter amazement at the perversion of mind and 
depravity of heart which your address evinces. How can the gene- 
rous, the charitable, the humane, the noble emotions of the Irish 
heart have become extinct amongst you. How can your nature be 
so totally changed as that you should become the apologists and 
advocates of that execrable system which makes man the property of 
his fellow man — destroys the foundations of all moral and social 
virtues — condemns to ignorance, immorality, and irreligion, millions 
of our fellow-creatures — renders the slave hopeless of relief, and 
perpetuates oppression by law, and in the name of what you call a 

Constitution The spirit of Democratic liberty is defiled 

by the continuance of negro slavery in the United States. The 
United States themselves are degraded below the most uncivilized 
nations by the atrocious inconsistency of talking liberty and prac- 
tising tyranny in its worst shape. The Americans attempt to palliate 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 213 

their iniquity by the futile excuse of personal interest, but the Irish, 
who have not even that futile excuse, and yet justify slavery, are 
utterly indefensible." 

Previously, at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, held 
in London, in 1 840, he said : 

" I am for speedy, immediate abolition. I care not what caste, 
creed or color, slavery may assume, I am for its total, its instant 
abolition. Whether it be personal or political, mental or corporeal, 
intellectual or spiritual, I am for its immediate abolition. I enter 
into no compromise with slavery ; I am for justice, in the name of 
humanity, and according to the law of the living God." 

The "Dublin University Magazine" for December, 1856, 
says: 

" The United States must learn, from the example of Rome, that 
Christianity and the pagan institution of slavery cannot co-exist 
together. The Republic must take her side and choose her favorite 
child ; for if she loves the one, she must hate the other." 



THE VOICE OF SCOTLAND. 

beattie says : 

" Slavery is inconsistent with the dearest and most essential rights 
of man's nature ; it is detrimental to virtue and industry ; it hardens 
the heart to those tender sympathies which form the most lovely part 
of human character ; it involves the innocent in hopeless misery, in 
order to procure wealth and pleasures for the authors of that misery ; 
it seeks to degrade into brutes beings whom the Lord of Heaven and 
Earth endowed with rational souls, and created for immortality ; in 
short, it is utterly repugnant to every principle of reason, religion, 
humanity, and conscience. It is impossible for a considerate and 
unprejudiced mind, to think of slavery without horror." 



214 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 



miller says: 

" The human mind revolts at a serious discussion of the subject of 
slavery. Every individual, whatever be his country or complexion, 
is entitled to freedom." 

macknight says : 

" Men-stealers are inserted among the daring criminals against 
whom the law of God directed its awful curses. These were persons 
who kidnapped men to sell them for slaves ; and this practice seems 
inseparable from the other iniquities and oppressions of slavery ; nor 
can a slave-dealer easily keep free from this criminality, if indeed 
the receiver is as bad as the thief." 



TEE VOICE OF FRANCE. 

lafayette says : 

" I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, 
if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of 
slavery." 

Again, while in the prison of Magdeburg, lie says : 

"I know not what disposition has been made of my plantation at 
Cayenne ; but I hope Madame de Lafayette will take care that the 
negroes who cultivate it shall preserve their liberty." 

O. Lafayette, grandson of General Lafayette, in a letter 
under date of April 26th, 1851, says : 

"This great question of the abolition of Negro Slavery, which has 
my entire sympathy, appears to me to have established its importance 
throughout the world. At the present time, the States of the Penin- 
sula, if I do not deceive myself, are the only European powers who 
still continue to possess slaves ; and America, while continuing to 
uphold slavery, feels daily, more and more, how heavily it weighs 
upon her destinies." 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 215 

Montesquieu asks : 

" What civil law can restrain a slave from running away, since he 
is not a member af society ?" 

Again he says : 

"Slavery is contrary to the fundamental principles of all societies." 

Again : 

" In democracies, where they are all upon an equality, slavery is 
contrary to the principles of the Constitution." 
Again : 

" Nothing puts one nearer the condition of a brute than always to 
see freemen and not be free." 

Again: 

"Even the earth itself, which teems with profusion under the cul- 
tivating hand of the free-born laborer, shrinks in barrenness from the 
contaminating sweat of a slave." 

louis x. issued the following edict : 

" As all men are by nature free-born, and as this kingdom is called 
the kingdom of Franks (freemen), it shall be so in reality. It is there- 
fore decreed that enfranchisement shall be granted throughout the 
whole kingdom upon just and reasonable terms." 

buffon says : 

" It is apparent that the unfortunate negroes are endowed with ex- 
cellent hearts, and possess the seed of every human virtue. I cannot 
write their history without lamenting their miserable condition." 

eousseau says : 
" The terms slavery and right, contradict and exclude each other." 

DE TOCQUEVILLE. 

Alexis de Tocqueville, the celebrated author of a work on 
Democracy in America, says : 



216 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 

" As the persevering enemy of despotism everywhere, and under 
all its forms, I am pained and astonished hy the fact that the freest 
people in the world is, at the present time, almost the only one among 
civilized and Christian nations which yet maintains personal servi- 
tude ; and this, while serfdom itself is about disappearing, where it has 
not already disappeared, from the most degraded nations of Europe. 

"An old and sincere friend of America, I am uneasy at seeing 
slavery retard her progress, tarnish her glory, furnish arms to her 
detractors, compromise the future career of the Union which is the 
guaranty of her safety and greatness, and point out beforehand to 
her, to all her enemies, the spot where they are to strike. As a man, 
too, I am moved at the spectacle of man's degradation by man, and I 
hope to see the day when the law will grant equal civil liberty to all 
the inhabitants of tbe same empire, as God accords the freedom of 
the will, without distinction, to the dwellers upon earth." 

victor hugo says : 

" I believe that, within a definite time — that, within a time not 
distant — the United States will repudiate slavery with horror ! Sla- 
very in such a country! Can there be an incongruity more mon- 
strous? Barbarism installed in the very heart of a country, which is 
itself the affirmation of civilization ; liberty wearing a chain ; blas- 
phemy echoing from the altar ; the collar of a negro chained to the 
pedestal of Washington ! It is a thing unheard of. I say more, it is 
impossible. Such a spectacle would destroy itself. The light of the 
nineteenth century alone is enough to destroy it. 

" What ! Slavery sanctioned by law among that illustrious people, 
who, for seventy years have measured the progress of civilization by 
their march, demonstrated democracy by their power, and liberty by 
their prosperity ! Slavery in the United States ! It is the duty of 
this Republic to set such an example no longer. It is a shame, and 
she was never born to bow her head. 

"It is not when slavery is taking leave of old nations, that it should 
be received by the new. What ! When slavery is departing from 
Turkey, shall it rest in America ? What ! Drive it from the hearth 
of Omar, and adopt it at the hearth of Franklin ? No ! No ! No !" 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 217 

THE VOICE OF GERMANY. 
HUMBOLDT. 

In his original essay on Cuba (shamefully mutilated trans- 
lations of which have been published in this country), Alex- 
ander von Humboldt, the most learned and correctly philo- 
sophic cosmopolite who has yet marked the progress of the 
nineteenth century, says : 

" If civilization should be transferred, instead of being extended ; 
if, at the end of the great and deplorable convulsions of Europe, 
America, between Cape Hatteras and the Missouri, should become 
the chief seat of the intelligence of Christianity, what a spectacle 
would be offered by tbat centre of civilization, where, in the Sanc- 
tuary of Liberty, we might be present at the probate sale of negroes 
after their owners' decease, and hear the sobbing of the parents sepa- 
rated from the children ! Let us hope that the generous principles, 
which so long have animated the legislatures in the North of the 
United States, will, little by little, extend toward the South, and to 
those Western regions where, by an imprudent and fatal law, Slavery 
and its iniquities have passed the Alleghany and the Mississippi." 

grottos says : 

"Those are men-stealers who abduct, keep, sell or buy slaves or 
freemen. To steal a man is the highest kind of theft." 

Goethe says : 

" Such busy multitudes I fain would see 
Stand upon free soil with a people free." 

schiller says: 

" First Freedom : 'tis man's native right, 
Be he in fetters born ; 
10 



218 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 

A rabble's cry has not the might 

To turn tins word to scorn : 
Fearful the Slave who breaks his chain, — 

Not fearful they who True remain." 

luther says: 

"Unjust violence is, by no means, the ordinance of God, and there- 
fore can bind no one in conscience and right, to obey, whether the 
command comes from pope, emperor, king or master." 

Carl Schurz, a distinguished German orator, patriot and 
statesman, now a citizen of Wisconsin — a man who was born 
to reflect honor on whatever state or nation in which he may- 
reside — in a most eloquent and forcible speech which he de- 
livered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, April 18, 1859, says : 

" Look at the Slave States. There is a class of men who are de- 
prived of their natural rights. But this is not the only deplorable 
feature of that peculiar organization of society. Equally deplorable 
is it, that there is another class of men who keep the former in sub- 
jection. That there are slaves is bad ; but almost worse is it, that 
there are masters. Are not the masters freemen ? No, sir ! Where 
is their liberty of the press? Where is their liberty of speech? 
Where is the man among them who dares to advocate openly prin- 
ciples not in strict accordance with the ruling system ? They speak 
of a Republican form of government, they speak of Democracy, but 
the despotic spirit of slavery and mastership combined pervades their 
whole political life like a liquid poison. I am an anti-slavery man, 
and I have a right to my opinion in South Carolina just as well as in 
Massachusetts.' My neighbor is a Democrat ; I may be sorry for it, 
but I solemnly acknowledge his right to his opinion in Massachusetts 
as well as in South Carolina. You tell me, that for my opinion they 
will mob me in South Carolina. Sir, there is the difference between 
South Carolina and Massachusetts. There is the difference between 
an anti-slavery man, who is a freeman, and a slaveholder, who is 
himself a slave." 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 219 

Frederick Kapp, an accomplished German author and ora- 
tor, who, since his arrival in America — many years ago — has 
paid much attention to our social and political institutions, 

says: 

" The whites who reside in the South, and are non-slaveholders, 
add very little weight to the scale, because they are entirely depend- 
ent upon the slaveholders, even though these latter constitute no 
more than perhaps the one-ninth of the whole population of the 
Slave States. The non-slaveholders are characterized by their 
poverty and ignorance ; and we think it a safe calculation to say 
that not more than one-fourth of the whole white population can 
read and write. It is the interest of the slaveholder to perpetuate 
ignorance. For this reason the free-school system of the North has 
no existence in the South ; the greater the rawness and poverty on 
the part of the whites, the greater is their subordination to, and de- 
pendence on, the slave aristocracy. 

" As a natural consequence growing out of these relations, it is the 
slaveholder only who can obtain public office, or who is elected to 
Congress ; in fact, many of the Southern constitutions prescribe such 
qualifications as being requisite. The slaveholders, by these means, 
transmit from family to family a hereditary influence, so that they 
are no longer merely natural politicians, but have a political educa- 
tion, a general political spirit, a very decided political tradition." 

To Dr. Max Langenschwarz, who, in 1833, in connection 
with his friend Ludwig Storch, formed an Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety in Leipsic, Germany, we are indebted for the following 
brief but interesting annals : 

"The first historical documents in regard to the abolition of 
slavery are to be found in Germany, whose people and governments 
at a very early period declared themselves against Leibeigenschaft 
(involuntary^ bondage), and against every right to buy or sell human 
beings, or to keep them as slaves. In a document of the fifth cen- 
tury we find that the Catti united with the Franks in a war against 



220 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 

the Gauls, under the express condition ' That the prisoners should be 
exchanged, that no prisoner should be held or brought into bondage 
as Leibeigen (a slave), and that capital punishment should avenge 
such a crime against God and men.' 

" The same feelings are to be found in many other documents of 
the old Germans. In 1372, Henry the Iron, one of the first Land- 
graves of Hessia, published an edict : ' Abolishing for all eternity 
the state of LeibeigenscTiaft (slavery), and threatening with death all 
those who should be discovered keeping a man, woman or child, in 
involuntary servitude.' 

"In a bishop's edict in 1411 (Muenster), we find the following : 
4 If a man is kept in involuntary bondage and as a slave against his 
will, he shall ask for his immediate deliverance ; and if he is kept a 
slave in spite of his demand, and defends himself against his master, 
and kills him, the killing (Todtschlag) shall not be considered as 
murder.' " 

THE VOICE OF RUSSIA. 

Those of our readers who keep themselves informed of the 
grand movements and enterprises of the age, need scarcely be 
reminded that the present Czar of Russia, Alexander II., who • 
is not merely an emperor, but also a man, and who, by the 
profound wisdom and magnanimity of his measures, bids fair 
to become a greater Alexander than Alexander the Great, 
has recently issued an elaborate ukase for the purpose of 
bringing about, in due time, the complete abolition of serf- 
dom throughout his vast empire. In Moscow, at a banquet 
held on the 9th of January, 1858, in eclat of the emperor's 
ukase, and in furtherance of the plans proposed for the eman- 
cipation of the serfs, M. Bapst, the eminent Russian profes- 
sor of political economy, said : 

"We have met here to celebrate an event which will be an epoch 
in the annals of our history, and upon which future historians will 
dwell witli pleasure. At the very commencement of this century, 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 221 

one of our first manufacturers said to Storch, that trade could never 
flourish under our system of compulsory labor or, in other words, of 
serfage; already, in 1849, the Free Economical Society proved by 
facts the inconveniences of serfage as regards agriculture. The de- 
velopment of national wealth has ever gone hand-in-hand with the 
regular organization of popular labor, which, as it gradually emanci- 
pates itself from stringent conditions, becomes more active, more 
progressive, and consequently more productive. In proportion as 
national labor gradually issues forth free from such disadvantageous 
conditions, the love of work increases among the people. Emulation 
and competition arouse the sleeping energies of the nation ; they will 
not allow them to rust, and excite them to healthy activity and con- 
tinual progress. The day of the primitive forms of the economical 
condition of the people has now left us forever. The wants of a 
great nation increase daily, and cannot be satisfied with the coarse 
conditions contrary to all progress of primitive economy founded on 
compulsory labor — a labor the limits of which are as restricted as its 
nature is unproductive. Our task is not to double, but to increase 
tenfold our productive power, our labor, our wealth, unless we wish 
to see taken away from us by nations more advanced than ourselves 
the markets which are ours by tradition and by our geographical 
position." 

On the same occasion, M. Pauloff, one of Professor Bapst's 
most worthy compatriots, said : 

" Heaven has allowed us to live long enough to witness the second 
regeneration of Eussia. We may congratulate ourselves, for this 
movement is one of great importance. We breathe more like Christ- 
ians, our hearts beat more nobly, and we may look at the light of 
heaven with a clearer eye. We have met to-day to express our deep 
and sincere sympathy for a holy and praiseworthy work, and we 
meet without any nervousness to mar our rejoicing. A new spirit 
animates us, a new era has commenced. One of our social condi- 
tions is on the eve of a change. If we consider it in a past light, we 
may perhaps admit that it was necessary that it should have been 
allowed to be as it was from the want of a better administrative or- 



222 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 

ganization, and of the concentration in the hands of a government of 
the means which have since given so great a development to the 
power of Russia. But what was momentarily gained to the State 
was lost to mankind. The advantage cost an enormous price. Order 
without — anarchy within — and the condition of the individual cast 
its shadow over society at large. The emperor has struck at the 
roots of this evil. The glory and prosperity of Russia cannot rest 
upon institutions hased on injustice and falsehood. No! these bless- 
ings are henceforth to he found in the path thrown open hy him 
whose name Russia pronounces with respect and pride. The emperor 
has ceded this great reform, which he might have accomplished hy 
his own powerful will, hy asking the nohles to take the initiative. 
Let us then hail this nohle idea, inspired hy the sole wish for the 
welfare of his people, with that enlightened heartiness which may 
now be expected from Russia. Let us not, however, suppose that 
the path traced hy history is an avenue of roses without thorns. 
This would he sheer ignorance. When a new, a more moral and 
Christian state of things is ahout to be established, the obstacles that 
will have to be encountered must not be taken into consideration, 
except with the hope that the torrent of the new life will sweep 
them away. The change in the economical condition of our national 
existence will arouse our individual energies, the want of which is 
one of our greatest evils. Let us wish, then, gentlemen, from our 
innermost heart, a long life to him who has marshalled his faithful 
Russia to the conquest of truth and justice." 

THE VOICE OF ITALY. 

cicero says: 

" By the grand laws of nature, all men are born free, and this law 
is universally binding upon all men." 
Again, lie says : 

*' Eternal justice is the basis of all human laws." 
Again : 
" Law is not something wrought out by man's ingenuity, nor is it 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 223 

a decree of the people, but it is something eternal, governing the 
world by the wisdom of its commands and prohibitions." 

Again : 

" Whatever is just is also the true law, nor can this true law be 
abrogated by any written enactments." 

Again: 

" If there be such a power in the decrees and commands of fools, 
that the nature of things is changed by their votes, why do they not 
decree that what is bad and pernicious shall be regarded as good and 
wholesome ; or why, if the law can make wrong right can it not 
make bad good?" 

Again : 

"Those who have made pernicious and unjust decrees have made 
anything rather than laws." 

Again: 

" The law of all nations forbids one man to pursue his advantage 
at the expense of another." 

lactantitjs says : 

"Justice teaches men to know God and to love men, to love and 
assist one another, being all equally the children of God." 

leo x. says: 

" Not only does the Christian religion, but nature herself cry out 
against the state of slavery." 

THE VOICE OF GREECE. 

soceates says: 

" Slavery is a system of outrage and robbery." 

aristotle says : 

" It is neither for the good, nor is it just, seeing all men are by na- 
ture alike, and equal, that one should be lord and master over others.'" 



224 TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 

polybius says : 

" None but unprincipled and beastly men in society assume tbe 
mastery over tbeir fellows, as it is among bulls, bears, and cocks." 

plato says : 

" Slavery is a system of tbe most complete injustice." 

From each, of the above, and from other nations, additional 
testimony is at hand ; but for reasons already assigned, we 
forbear to introduce it. Corroborative of the correctness of 
the position which we have assumed, even Persia has a voice, 
which may be easily recognized in the tones of her immortal 
Cyrus, who says : 

" To fight, in order not to be made a slave, is noble." 

Than Great Britain no nation has more heartily or honor- 
ably repented of the crime of slavery — no nation, on the per- 
ception of its error, has ever acted with more prompt magna- 
nimity to its outraged and unhappy bondsmen. Entered to 
her credit, many precious jewels of liberty remain in our pos- 
session, ready to be delivered when called for ; of their value 
some idea may be formed, when Ave state that they are fili- 
greed with such names as Granville, Grattan, Gibson, Cam- 
den, Clarkson, Sharp, Sheridan, Sidney, Thompson, Martin, 
Baines and Buxton. 

Virginia, the Carolinas, and other Southern States, which 
are provided, not with republican, but with anti-republican 
forms of government, and which have abolished Freedom, 
should learn, from the history of the monarchical governments 
of the Old World, if not from the example of the more libe- 
ral and enlightened portions of the New-, how to abolish 
Slavery. The lesson is before them in a variety of exceed- 
ingly interesting forms, and, sooner or later, they must learn 



TESTIMONY OF THE NATIONS. 225 

it, either voluntarily or by compulsion. Virginia, in particu- 
lar, is a spoilt child, having been the pet of the General Gov- 
ernment for the last seventy years; and like many other 
spoilt children, she has become fro ward, peevish, perverse, 
sidky and irreverent — not caring to know her duties, and 
failing to perform even those which she does know. Her su- 
periors perceive that the abolition of slavery woidd be a bless- 
ing to her ; she is, however, either too ignorant to understand 
the truth, or else, as is the more probable, her false pride and 
obstinacy restrain her from acknowledging it. What is to be 
done ? Shall ignorance, or prejudice, or obduracy, or willful 
meanness, triumph over knowledge, and liberality, and guile- 
lessness, and laudable enterprise ? No, never ! Assured that 
Virginia and all the other slaveholding States are doing 
wrong every day, it is our duty to make them do right, if we 
have the power ; and we believe we have the power now resi- 
dent within their own borders. What are the opinions, gene- 
rally, of the non-slaveholding whites ? Let them speak. 



10* 



CHAPTER VI. 

TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 

Who blushed alike to be, or have a slave- 
Unchristian thought ! on what pretence soe'er, 
Of right inherited, or else acquired; 
Of loss, or profit, or what plea you name, 
To buy or sell, to barter, whip, and hold 
In chains a being of celestial make — 
Of kindred form, of kindred faculties, 
Of kindred feelings, passions, thoughts, desires; 
Born free, and heir of an immortal hope ! 
Thought villainous, absurd, detestable ! 
Unworthy to be harbored in a fiend! 

POLLOK. 

Lo ! the nation is arousing, 

From its slumber, long and deep ; 
And the Church of God is waking, 
Never, never more to sleep, 

While a bondman 
In his chains remains to weep. 

Oliver Johnson. 

In quest of arguments against slavery, we have perused the 
works of several eminent Christian writers of different deno- 
minations, and we now proceed to lay before the reader the 
result of a portion of our labor. As it is the special object of 
this chapter to operate on, to correct, and cleanse the con- 
sciences of slaveholding professors of religion, we shah adduce 
testimony only from the five churches to which they, in their 
satanic piety mostly belong — the Presbyterian, the Episcopal, 
the Baptist, the Methodist, and the Roman Catholic — all of 

226 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 227 

which, we hope, are destined, at no distant day, to become 
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Heaven-ordained Love 
and Freedom. With few exceptions, all the other Christian 
sects are, as they should be, avowedly and inflexibly opposed 
to the inhuman system of slavery. The Congregational, the 
Quaker, the Lutheran, the Dutch and German Reformed, the 
Unitarian and Universalist, especially, are all honorable, able, 
and eloquent defenders of the natural rights of man. We 
will begin by introducing a mass of 

PRESBYTERIAN TESTIMONY. 

The Rev. Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia, one of the most 
learned Presbyterian preachers and commentators of the day, 
says : 

" There is a deep and growing conviction in the minds of the mass 
of mankind, that slavery violates the great laws of our nature ; that it 
is contrary to the dictates of humanity ; that it is essentially unjust, 
oppressive, and cruel ; that it invades the rights of liberty with which 
the Author of our being has endowed all human beings ; and that in 
all the forms in which it has ever existed, it has been impossible to 
guard it from what its friends and advocates woidd call ' abuses of the 
system.' It is a violation of the first sentiments expressed in our 
Declaration of Independence, and on which our fathers founded the 
vindication of their own conduct in an appeal to arms. It is at war 
with all that a man claims for himself and for his own children ; and 
it is opposed to all the struggles of mankind, in all ages, for freedom. 
The claims of humanity plead against it. The struggles for freedom 
everywhere in our world condemn it. The instinctive feeling in 
every man's own bosom in regard to himself is a condemnation of it. 
The noblest deeds of valor and of patriotism in our own land, and in 
all lands where men have struggled for freedom, are a condemnation 
of the system. All that is noble in man is opposed to it ; all that is 
base, oppressive, and cruel, pleads for it. 

" The spirit of the New Testament is against slavery, and the prin- 



228 TESTIMONY OF THE CHUECHES. 

ciples of the New Testament, if fairly, applied, would abolish it. In 
the New Testament, no man is commanded to purchase and own a 
slave ; no man is commended as adding anything to the evidences of 
his Christian character, or as performing the appropriate duty of a 
Christian, for owning one. Nowhere in the New Testament is the 
institution referred to as a good one, or as a desirable one. It is com- 
monly — indeed, it is almost universally — conceded that the proper 
application of the principles of the New Testament would abolish 
slavery everywhere, or that the state of things which will exist when 
the Gospel shall be fairly applied to all the relations of life, slavery 
will not be found among those relations. 

" Let slavery be removed from the church, and let the voice of the 
church, with one accord, be lifted up in favor of freedom ; let the 
church be wholly detached from the institution, and let there be 
adopted by all its ministers and members an interpretation of the 
Bible — as I believe there may be and ought to be — that shall be in 
accordance with the deep-seated principles of our nature in favor of 
freedom, and with our own aspirations for liberty, and with the sen- 
timents of the world in its onward progress in regard to human 
rights, and not only would a very material objection against the Bible 
be taken away — and one which would be fatal if it were well-founded 
— but the establishment of a very strong argument in favor of the 
Bible, as a revelation from God, would be the direct result of such a 
position." 

Writing "To a certain elder of a certain Presbyterian 
Church," of which church he himself is a member, 

PEOF. C. D. CLEAVELAND SayS : 

" What, let me ask, can tend more to shake the belief of men in 
the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures, than to endeavor to 
prove to them that these same Scriptures — the foundation rock of our 
faith — sanction such a man-brutaliziug crime as American Slavery ? 
The natural conscience of man, all the world over, revolts with loath- 
ing at this monstrous crime ; and the law of nations has pronounced 
the slave trade to be piracy, condemning to the gallows those found 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 229 

guilty of it; and a sad day will it be for Christianity, if men shall be 
brought to believe that their natural consciences and the laws of 
nations are higher, in their moral standard, than what claims to be 
the revealed will of God." 

From a resolution denunciatory of slavery, unanimously 
adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, 
in 181S, we make the following extract : 

" We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human 
race by another, as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred 
rights of human nature, as utterly inconsistent with the law of God, 
which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and as totally 
irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the Gospel of Christ, 
which enjoins that ' all things whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them.' .... "We rejoice that the 
church to which we belong commenced, as early as any other in tbis 
country, the good work of endeavoring to put an end to slavery, and 
that in the same work many of its members have ever since been, and 
now are, among the most active, vigorous, and efficient laborers. 

. . . . We earnestly exhort them to continue, and, if possible, 
to increase their exertions to effect a total abolition of slavery." 

A Committee of the Synod of Kentucky, in an address to 
the Presbyterians of that State, says : 

" That our negroes will be worse off, if emancipated, is, we feel, 
but a specious pretext for lulling our own pangs of conscience, and 
answering the argument of the philanthropist. None of us believes 
that God has so created a whole race that it is better for them to 
remain in perpetual bondage." 

EPISCOPAL TESTIMONY. 

bishop iiorsley says : 

" Slavery is injustice, which no consideration of policy can ex- 
tenuate." 



230 TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 

bishop butler says : 

"Despicable as the negroes may appear in our eyes, they are the 
creatures of God, and of the race of mankind, for whom Christ died, 
and it is inexcusable to keep them in ignorance of the end for which 
they were made, and of the means whereby they may become par- 
takers of the general redemption." 

bishop pobteus says : 

" The Bible classes men-stealers or slave-traders among the mur- 
derers of fathers and mothers, and the most profane criminals on 
earth." 

Thomas Scott, the celebrated Commentator, says : 

" To number the persons of men with beasts, sheep and horses, as 
the stock of a farm, or with bales of goods, as the cargo of a ship, is, 
no doubt, a most detestable and anti-Christian practice." 

John Jay, Esq., of the city of New York— a most exem- 
plary Episcopalian— in a pamphlet entitled, "Thoughts on 
the Duty of the Episcopal Church, in Relation to Slavery," 

says : 

" Alas ! for the expectation that she would conform to the spirit 
of her ancient mother ! She has not merely remained a mute and 
careless spectator of this great conflict of truth and justice with 
hypocrisy and cruelty, but her very priests and deacons may be seen 
ministering at the altar of slavery, offering their talents and influ- 
ence at its unholy shrine, and openly repeating the awful blasphemy, 
that the precepts of our Saviour sanction the system of American 
slavery. Her Northern clergy, with rare exceptions, whatever they 
may feel on the subject, rebuke it neither in public nor in private, 
and her periodicals, far from advancing the progress of abolition, at 
times oppose our societies, impliedly defending slavery, as not incom- 
patible with Christianity, and occasionally withholding information 
useful to the cause of freedom." 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 231 

A writer in a late number of " The Anti-Slavery Church- 
man," published in Geneva, Wisconsin, speaking of a certain 
portion of the New Testament, says : 

" This passage of Paul places necessary work in the hands of Gos- 
pel ministers. If they preach the whole Gospel, they must preach 
what this passage enjoins — and if they do this, they must preach 
against American slavery. Its being connected with politics does 
not shield them. Political connections cannot place sin under pro- 
tection. They cannot throw around it guards that the public teachers 
of morals may not pass. Sin is a violation of God's law — and God's 
law must be proclaimed and enforced at all hazards. This is the 
business of the messenger of God, and if anything stands in its way, 
it is his right, rather it his solemn commission, to go forward — 
straightway to overpass the lines that would shut him out, and utter 
his warnings. Many sins there are, that in like manner, might be 
shielded. Fashion, and rank, and business, are doing their part to 
keep much sin in respectability, and excuse it from the attacks of 
God's ministers. But what are these, that they should seal a minis- 
ter's lips — what more are the wishes of politicians?" 

For further testimony from this branch of the Christian 
system, if desired, we refer the reader to the Rev. Dr. Tyng, 
the Rev. Evan M. Johnson, and the Rev. J. MoNaniara, — 
all Broad Church Episcopalians, whose magic eloquence and 
irresistible arguments bid fair, at an early day, to win over to 
the paths of progressive freedom, truth, justice and humanity, 
the greater number of their High and Low Church brethren. 
- 

BAPTIST TESTIMONY. 
SrUEGEON. 

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (of London), the brightest star 
now shining in the Baptist firmanent, says : 

" I do, from my inmost soul, detest slavery anywhere and every- 
where, and although I commune at the Lord's table with men of all 



232 TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 

creeds, yet with a slaveholder I have no fellowship of any sort or 
kind. "Whenever one has called upon me, I have considered it my. 
duty to express my detestation of his wickedness, and would as soon 
think of receiving a murderer into my church, or into any sort of 
friendship, as a manstealer. ... I shall remember that my voice 
echoes beyond the Atlantic, and the crying sin of a man-stealing 
people shall not go unrebuked." 

Concerning a certain text, the Rev. Win. H. Brisbane, 
once a slaveholding Baptist in South Carolina, says : 

" Paul was speaking of the law having been made for mcn-stealers. 
Where is the record of that law? It is in Exodus xxi. 16, and in 
these words : ' He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he 
be found in his possession, he shall surely be put to death. 1 Here it 
will be perceived that it was a crime to sell the man, for which the 
seller must suffer death. But it was no less a crime to hold him as 
a slave, for this also was punishable with death. A man may be 
kidnapped out of slavery into freedom. There was no law against 
that. And why ? Because kidnapping a slave and placing him in a 
condition of freedom, was only to restore him to his lost rights. But 
if a man who takes him becomes a slaveholder, or a slave seller, then 
he is a criminal, liable to the penalty of death, because he robs the 
man of liberty. Perhaps some will say this law was only applicable 
to the first holder of the slave, that is the original kidnapper, but not 
to his successors who might have purchased or inherited him. But 
what is kidnapping ? Suppose I propose to a neighbor to give him 
a certain sum of money if he will steal a white child in Carolina, and 
deliver him to me. He steals him ; I pay him the money upon his de- 
livering the child to me. Is it not my act as fully as his ? Am I not 
also the thief? But does it alter the case whether I agree beforehand 
or not to pay him, for the child ? He steals him, and then sells him 
to me. ne is found by his parents in my hands. Will it avail me to 
say I purchased him and paid my money for him ? "Will it not be 
asked, Do you not know that a white person is not merchantable? 
And shall I not have to pay the damage for detaining that child in 
my service as a slave ? Assuredly, not only in the eyes of the law, 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHTJKCHES. 233 

but in the judgment of the whole community, I would be regarded 
a criminal. So when one man steals another and offers him for sale, 
no one, in view of the Divine law, can buy him, for the reason that 
the Divine law forbids that man shall, in the first place, be made a 
merchantable article. The inquiry must be, if I buy, I buy in viola- 
tion of the Divine law, and it will not do for me to plead that I bought 
him. I have him in possession, and that is enough ; God condemns 
me for it as a man-stealer. My having him in possession is evidence 
against me, and the Mosaic law says, if he be found in my hands, I 
must die. Now, when Paul said the law was made for men-stealers, 
was it not also saying the law was made for slaveholders ? I am not 
intending to apply this term in a harsh spirit. But I am bound, as 
I fear God, to speak what I am satisfied is the true meaning of the 
apostle." 

In his "Elements of Moral Science," the Rev. Francis 
Wayland, D.D., one of the most erudite and distinguished 
Baptists now living, says : 

" The moral precepts of the Bible are diametrically opposed to 
slavery. They are, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, and all 
things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even 
so unto them. 

" The application of these precepts is universal. Our neighbor 
is every one 'whom we may benefit. The obligation respects all things 
whatsoever. The precept then, manifestly, extends to men as men, 
or men of every condition ; and if to all things whatsoever, certainly 
to a thing so important as the right to personal liberty. 

" Again. By this precept, it is made our duty to cherish as ten- 
der and delicate a respect for the right which the meanest individual 
possesses over the means of happiness bestowed upon him by God 
as we cherish for our own right over our own means of happiness 
or as we desire any other individual to cherish for it. Now, were 
this precept obeyed, it is manifest that slavery could not in fact 
exist for a single instant. The principle of the precept is absolutely 
subversive of the principle of slavery. That of the one is the entire 



234 TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 

equality of right ; that of the other, the entire absorption of the 
rights of one in the rights of the other. 

" If any one doubts respecting the bearing of the Scripture precept 
upon this case, a few plain questions may throw additional light 
upon the subject. For instance : 

" Do the precepts and the spirit of the Gospel allow me to derive 
my support from a system which extorts labor from my fellow-men, 
without allowing them any voice in the equivalent which they shall 
receive ; and which can only be sustained by keeping them in a state 
of mental degradation, and by shutting them out, in a great degree, 
from the means of salvation : 

"Would the master be willing that another person should subject 
him to slavery, for the same reasons, and on the same grounds that 
he holds his slaves in bondage ? 

" Would the Gospel allow us, if it were in our power, to reduce 
our fellow-citizens of our own color to slavery ? If the Gospel be 
diametrically opposed to the principle of slavery, it must be opposed 
to the practice of slavery ; and therefore, were the principles of the 
Gospel fully adopted, slavery could not exist. 

" The very course which the Gospel takes on this subject, seems to 
have been the only one that could have been taken, in order to elfect 
the universal abolition of slavery. The Gospel was designed, not for 
one race or for one time, but for all races and for all times. It looked 
not at the abolition of this form of evil for that age alone, but for its 
universal abolition. Hence, the important object of its Author was, 
to gain it a lodgment in every part of the known world ; so that, by 
its universal diffusion among all classes of society, it might quietly 
and peacefully modify and subdue the evil passions of men ; and 
thus without violence, work a revolution in the whole mass of man- 
kind. 

" If the system be wrong, as we have endeavored to show, if it be 
at variance with our duty both to God and to man, it must be aban- 
doned. If it be asked when, I ask again when shall a man begin to 
cease doing wrong? Is not the answer, immediately? If a man is 
injuring us, do we ever doubt as to the time when he ought to cease ? 
There is, then, no doubt in respect to the time when we ought to 
cease inflicting injury upon others." 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 235 

Abraham Booth, an eminent theological writer of the Bap- 
tist persuasion, says : 

"I have not a stronger conviction of scarcely anything, than that 
slaveholding (except where the slave has forfeited his liherty by 
crimes against society) is wicked and inconsistent with Christian 
character. To me it is evident, that whoever would purchase an in- 
nocent black man to make him a slave, wonld with equal readiness 
purchase a white man for the same purpose, could he do it with 
equal impunity and no more disgrace." 

At a meeting of the General Committee of the Baptists of 
Virginia, in 1*789, the following resolution was offered by- 
Eld. John Leland, and adopted : 

" Resolved, That slavery is a violent deprivation of the rights of 
nature and inconsistent with republican government, and therefore 
we recommend it to our brethren to make use of every measure to 
extirpate this horrid evil from the land ; and pray Almighty God that 
our honorable legislature may have it in their power to proclaim the 
great jubilee, consistent with the principles of good policy. 



METHODIST TESTIMONY. 

John Wesley, the celebrated founder of Methodism, says : 

" Men-buyers are exactly on a level with men-stealers." 
Again, he says : * 

"American slavery is the vilest that ever saw the sun; it consti- 
tutes the sum of all villainies." 

The learned Dr. Adam Clarke, author of a voluminous 
commentary on the Scriptures, says : 

"Slave-dealers, whether those who carry on the traffic in human 
flesh and blood, or those who steal a person in order to sell him into 
bondage, or those who buy such stolen men or women, no matter of 



236 TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 

what color or what country ; or the nations who legalize or connive 
at such traffic — all these are men-stealers, and God classes them with 
the most flagitious of mortals." 

One of the present members of the Black River (New 
York) Conference, a gentleman of fine ability, who is zealous 
in every good word and work, 



PROF. HIRAM MATTISON, Says : 

" The attitude of the American churches in regard to slavery — 
that parent of every other ahomination, is not only strengthening 
the hands of infidelity against Christianity in France and England, 
hut iu every other nominally Christian country ; and especially in 
these United States. It is sapping the very foimdations of all confi- 
dence in the Christian religion, in the minds of tens of thousands. 
Not distinguishing hetween the loathsome cancer and the rest of the 
hody — hetween the counterfeit and the genuine — they condemn the 
whole, and are thenceforth regarded as infidels. Instead of a slave- 
holding religion they accept no religion. And infidelity has no more 
faithful allies in America, than the D.D.'s and other ministers who 
defend, or at least apologize for American slavery. They are making 
more infidels than all the infidel hooks, and periodicals, and lectures 
in the land. Let us, then, on this account also — its tendency to 
infidelity — rise up and put away all slaveholding from the Church of 
Christ." 

Again, laying before us a list of the churches which are 
righteously active in condemning and opposing slavery, and 
also of those which are wickedly passive in excusing and up- 
holding it, he says to his brother Methodists : 

" Look at our position as a Church in the light of these facts. See 
in what company we place ourselves. Let us range the anti-slavery 
and pro-slavery Northern Churches in parallel columns, that our 
shame may be the more apparent : 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 



237 



Slave-holding Churches. 

1. Old School Presbyterian. 

2. Protestant Episcopal. 

3. Roman Catholic. 

4. Methodist Epis. Church!" 



Anti- Slavery Churches. 

1. Friends, or Quakers. 

2. Free-will Baptists. 

3. United Brethren. 

4. Associate Presbyterian. 

5. Wesleyan Methodist. 

6. Orthodox Congregational. 

7. General Baptists. 

8. Ref'd Prot. Dutch Church. 

9. New School Presbyterian. 

10. Unitarian. 

11. Universalists ! 



One of the rules laid down in the Methodist Discipline as 
amended in 1784, was as follows : 

"Every member of our Society -who lias slaves in possession, shall, 
within twelve months after notice given to him by the assistant, 
legally execute and record an instrument, whereby he emancipates 
and sets free every slave in his possession." 

Another rule was in these words : 

" No person holding slaves shall in future be admitted into Society, 
or to the Lord's Supper, till he previously complies with these rules 
concerning slavery." 

The answer to the question — " What shall be done with 
those who buy or sell slaves, or give them away ?" — is couched 
in the following language : 

" They are immediately to be expelled, unless they buy them on 
purpose to free them." 

In 1785, the voice of this church was heard as follows : 

"We do hold in the deepest abhorrence the practice of slavery, 
and shall not cease to seek its destruction, by all wise and prudent 
means." 



In 1797, the Discipline contained the following wholesome 
paragraph : 



238 TESTIMONY OF TEE CHURCHES. 

" The preachers and other members of our Society are requested to 
consider the subject of negro slavery, with deep attention, and that 
they impart to the General Conference, through the medium of the 
Yearly Conferences, or otherwise, any important thoughts on the 
subject, that the Conference may have full light, in order to take fur- 
ther steps toward eradicating this enormous evil from that part of the 
Church of God with which they are connected. The annual Confer- 
ences are directed to draw up addresses for the gradual emancipation 
of the slaves, to the legislatures of those States in which no general 
laws have been passed for that purpose. These addresses shall urge, 
in the most respectful but pointed manner, the necessity of a law for 
the gradual emancipation of slaves. Proper committees shall be 
appointed by the Annual Conferences, out of the most respectable of 
our friends, for conducting the business ; and presiding elders, elders, 
deacons, and travelling preachers, shall procure as many proper sig- 
natures as possible to the addresses, and give all the assistance in 
their power, in every respect, to aid the committees, and to forward 
the blessed undertaking. Let this be continued from year to year, 
till the desired end be accomplished." 

CATHOLIC TESTIMONY. 

It has been only about twenty-two years since Pope Gre- 
gory XVI. immortalized himself by issuing the famous Bull 
against slavery, from which the following is an extract : 

"Placed as we are on the Supreme seat of the apostles, and acting, 
though by no merits of our own, as the vicegerent of Jesus Christ, the 
Son of God, who, through his great mercy, condescended to make 
himself man, and to die for the redemption of the world, we regard 
as a duty devolving on our pastoral functions, that we endeavor to 
turn aside our faithful flocks entirely from the inhuman traffic in 
negroes, or any other human beings whatever. ... In progress 
of time, as the clouds of heathen superstition became gradually dis- 
persed, circumstances reached that point, that during several centu- 
ries there were no slaves allowed amongst the great majority of the 
Christian nations; but with grief we are compelled to add, that there 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 239 

afterward arose, even among the faithful, a race of men, who, basely 
blinded by the appetite and desire of sordid lucre, did not hesitate to 
reduce, in remote regions of the earth, Indians, negroes, and other 
wretched beings, to the misery of slavery ; or, finding the trade es- 
tablished and augmented, to assist the shameful crime of others. Nor 
did many of the most glorious of the Koman Pontiffs omit severely to 
reprove their conduct as injurious to their souls' health, and disgrace- 
ful to the Christian name. Among these may be especially quoted 
the bull of Paul III., which bears the date of the 20th of May, 1537, 
addressed to the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, and another still 
more comprehensive, by Urban VIII., dated the 22d of April, 1636 
to the collector Jurius of the apostolic chamber in Portugal, most 
severely castigating by name those who presumed to subject either 
East or West Indians to slavery, to sell, buy, exchange, or give them 
away, to separate them from their wives and children, despoil them 
of their goods and property, to bring or transmit them to other places, 
or by any means to deprive them of liberty, or retain them in slavery ; 
also most severely castigating those who should presume or dare to 
afford counsel, aid, favor, or assistance, under any pretext or bor- 
rowed color, to those doing the aforesaid; or should preach or teach, 
that it is lawful, or should otherwise presume or dare to cooperate, 
by any possible means, with the aforesaid. . . . Wherefore we, 
desiring to divert this disgrace from the whole confines of Christianity, 
having summoned several of our venerable brothers, their Eminences 
the Cardinals of the II. E. Church, to our council, and having maturely 
deliberated on the whole matter, pursuing the footsteps of our pre- 
decessors, admonished by our apostolical authority, and urgently 
invoke in the Lord, all Christians, of whatever condition, that none 
henceforth dare to subject to slavery, unjustly persecute, or despoil 
of their goods, Indians, negroes, or other classes of men, or be acces- 
sories to others, or furnish them aid or assistance in so doing ; and 
on no account henceforth to exercise that inhuman traffic by which 
negroes are reduced to slavery, as if they were not men but automata 
or chattels, and are sold in defiance of all the laws of justice and 
humanity, and devoted to severe and intolerable labors. We further 
reprobate, by our apostolical authority, all the above-described 
offences, as utterly unworthy of the Christian name; and by the 



240 TESTIMONY OF THE CHTTKCHES. 

same authority, we rigidly prohibit and interdict all and every indi- 
vidual, whether ecclesistical or laical, from presuming to defend that 
commerce in negro slaves under pretence or borrowed color, or to 
teach or publish in any manner, publicly or privately, things con- 
trary to the admonitions which we have given in these letters. 

" And, finally, that these, our letters, may be rendered more appa- 
rent to all, and that no person may allege any ignorance thereof, we 
decree and order that it shall be published according to custom, and 
copies thereof be properly affixed to the gates of St. Peter and of the 
Apostolic Chancel, every and in like manner to the General Court of 
Mount Citatorio, and in the field of the Campus Flora} and also 
through the city, by one of our heralds, according to aforesaid cus- 
tom. 

" Given at Eome, at the Palace of Santa Maria Major, under the 
seal of the fisherman, on the 3d day of December, 1837, and in the 
ninth year of our pontificate. 

" Countersigned by Cardinal A. Lambruschini." 

We have already quoted the language of Pope Leo X., who 
says: 

"Not only does the Christian religion, but nature herself, cry out 
against the state of slavery." 

The Abbe Raynal says : 

" He who supports slavery is the enemy of the human race. He 
divides it into two societies of legal assassins, the oppressors and the 
oppressed. I shall not be afraid to cite to the tribunal of reason and 
justice those governments which tolerate this cruelty, or which even 
are not ashamed to make it the basis of their power." 

O'CONNELL. 

Daniel O'Corrnell, the ablest Catholic statesman of his time, 
in his reply to the address of the Irish Repeal Association of 
Cincinnati, under date of October 11, 1843, says — and we 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 241 

pray Heaven that his words of truth and wisdom may not be 
entirely lost upon such gentlemen as Mr. Charles O'Conor of 
New York : 



" The Catholic clergy may endure, hut they assuredly do not en- 
courage the slaveowners. We have, indeed, heard it said that some 
Catholic clergymen have slaves of their own ; but, it is added, and 
we are assured positively that no Irish Catholic clergyman is a slave- 
owner. At all events, every Catholic knows how distinctly slave- 
holding, and especially slave trading is condemned by the Catholic 
Church. That most eminent man, his Holiness, the present Pope, 
has, by an allocution, published throughout the world, condemned 
all dealing and traffic in slaves. Nothing can be more distinct nor 
more powerful than the Pope's denunciation of that most abominable 
crime. Yet it subsists in a more abominable form than his Holiness 
could possibly describe, in the traffic which still exists in the sale of 
slaves from one State of America to another. What, then, are we to 
think of you, Irish Catholics, who send us an elaborate vindication 
of slavery without the slightest censure of that hateful crime — a 
crime which the Pope has so completely condemned — namely, the 
diabolical raising of slaves for sale, and selling them to other States. 

" If you be Catholics, you should devote your time and best exer- 
tions to working out the pious intentions of his Holiness. Yet you 
prefer — oh, sorrow and shame ! — to volunteer your vindication of 
everything that belongs to the guilt of slavery ! 

" We conclude by conjuring you, and all other Irishmen in Ame- 
rica, in the name of your fatherland — in the name of humanity — in 
the name of the God of mercy and charity, we conjure you, Irishmen 
and descendants of Irishmen, to abandon forever all defence of the 
hideous negro-slavery system. Let it no more be said that your feel- 
ings are made so obtuse by the air of America, that you cannot feel, 
as Catholics and Christians ought to feel, this truth— this plain truth 
— that one man cannot have any property in another man. There 
is' not one of you who does not recognize that principle in his own 
person ; yet we perceive — and this agonizes us almost to madness, 
that you, boasting an Irish descent, should, without the instigation 

11 



242 TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCHES. 

of any pecuniary 01 interested motive, but out of the sheer and single 
love of wickedness and crime, come forward as the volunteer defend- 
ers of the most degrading species of human slavery. Wo ! wo ! wo ! 
. . . Irishmen, I call on you to join in crushing slavery, and in 
giving liberty to every man, of every caste, creed, and color." 

From the proceedings of a Massachusetts Anti-slavery Con- 
vention in 1855, we make the following extract 

"Henry Kemp, a Eoman Catholic, came forward to defend the 
Komish Church in reply to Mr. Foster. He claimed that the Catho- 
lic Church is thoroughly anti-slavery — as thoroughly as even his 
Mend Foster." 

Thus manfully do men of pure hearts and noble minds, 
whether in Church or State, and without regard to sect or 
party, lift up their voices against the wicked and pernicious 
system of human slavery. Thus they speak, and thus they 
are obliged to speak, if they speak at all ; it is only the voice 
of Nature, Justice, Truth, and Love, that issues from them. 
The divine principle in man prompts him to speak and strike 
for Freedom; the diabolical principle within him prompts 
him to speak and strike for Slavery. 

From those churches which are now — as all churches ought 
to be, and will be, ere the world becomes Christianized — 
thoroughly indoctrinated in the principles of freedom, we do 
not, as already intimated, deem it particularly necessary to 
bring forward new arguments in opposition to slavery! If, 
however, the reader w T ould be pleased to hear from the 
churches to which we chiefly allude — and, by the by, he might 
hear from them with much profit to himself — we respectfully 
refer him to Henry Ward Beecher, George B. Cheever, Joseph 
P. Thompson, Theodore Parker, E. H. Cha])in, and H. W. 
Bellows, of the North, and to M. D. Conway, John G. Fee, 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHUKCHES. 243 

James S. Davis, Daniel "Worth, and W. E. Lincoln, of the 
South. All these reverend gentlemen, ministers of different 
denominations, feel it their duty to preach against slavery, 
and, to their honor be it said, they do preach against it with 
unabated zeal and success. Our earnest prayer is, that 
Heaven may enable them, their contemporaries and success- 
ors, to preach against it with such energy and effect, as will 
cause it, ha due time, to disappear forever from the soil of 
our Republic. 



CHAPTER VII. 

BIBLE TESTIMONY. 

Quench, righteous God, the thirst 
That Congo's sons hath curs'd— 

The thirst for gold ! 
Shall not thy thunders speak, 
Where Mammon's altars reek, 
Where maids and matrons shriek, 

Bound, bleeding, sold ? 

Pierpont. 

Every person who has read the Bible, and who has a 
proper understanding of its leading moral precepts, feels in 
his own conscience, that it is an original and complete anti- 
slavery book. In a crude state of society — in a barbarous 
age — when men were in a manner destitute of wholesome 
laws, either human or divine, it is possible that a mild form of 
slavery may have beefl tolerated, and even regulated, as an 
institution clothed with the importance of temporary recogni- 
tion ; but the Deity never approved it, and for the very reason 
that it is impossible for him to do wrong, he never will, never 
can approve it. The worst system of servitude of which we 
have any accoimt in the Bible — and, by the way, it furnishes 
no account of anything so bad as slavery (the evil-one and his 
hot home alone excepted) — was far less rigorous and atro- 
cious than that now established in the Southern States of this 
Confederacy. Even that system, however, the worst which 
seems to have been practised to a considerable extent by those 
venerable old fogies, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was one of 

24i 



BIBLE TESTIMONY. 245 

the monstrous inventions of Satan that God " winked " at ; 
and, to the mind of the biblical scholar, nothing can be more 
evident, than that He determined of old, that it should, in 
due time, be abolished. To say that the Bible sanctions slavery 
is equivalent to saying that the sun loves darkness ; to say 
that one man was created to domineer over another is to call 
in question the justice, mercy, and goodness of God. 

We will now listen to a limited number of the 



PRECEPTS AND SAYINGS OE THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants 
thereof." 

" He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his 
hand, he shall surely be put to death." 

" Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is es- 
caped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee where 
it liketh him best. Thou shalt not oppress him." 

" Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry 
but shall not be heard." . 

" He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker " 

" Relieve the oppressed." 

"Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways." 

" Let the oppressed go free." 

" Hide the outcasts. Bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine 
outcasts dwell with thee. Be thou a covert to them from the face of 
the spoiler." 

" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 



246 BIBLE TESTIMONY. 

" Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the per- 
son of the mighty ; but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy 

neighbor." 

" The wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night 
until the morning." 

" Eob not the poor, because he is poor; neither oppress the 
afflicted. For the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of 
those who spoiled them." 

"Do justice to the afflicted and needy ; rid them out of the hand 
of the wicked." 

"Execute judgment and justice ; take away your exactions from 
my people, saith the Lord God." 



and giveth him not for his work." 

" Therefore thus saith the Lord; ye have not hearkened unto me, 
in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to 
his neighbor : behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to 
the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you 
to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth." 

'• I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the 
adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress 
the hireling in bis wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn 
aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of 
Hosts." 

"As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he 
that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst 
of his days, and at his end shall be a fool." 

And now let us listen to a few selected 



BIBLE TESTIMONY. 247 

PRECEPTS AND SAYINGS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

" Call no man master, neither be ye called masters." 

"Remember those that are in bonds as bound with them." 

"Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 

" If thou mayest be made free, use it rather." 

" Do good to all men, as ye have opportunity." 

" The laborer is worthy of his hire." 

" All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do 
ye even so to them." 

" Be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love ; in 
honor preferring one another." 

" Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made 
you free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." 

Some years ago a clerical sycophant of the slave power had 
the temerity to publish a book or pamphlet entitled " Bible 
Defence of Slavery," which the " Baltimore Sun," in the 
course of a caustic criticism, handled in the following manner.: 

"Bible defenoe of slavery! There is no such thing as a Bible 
defence of slavery at the present day. Slavery in the United States 
is a social institution, originating in the convenience and cupidity of 
our ancestors, existing by State laws, and recognized, to a certain ex- 
tent—for the recovery of slave property — by the Constitution. And 
nobody would pretend that, if it were inexpedient and unprofitable 
for any man or any State to continue to hold slaves, they would be 
bound to do so on the ground of a ' Bible defence ' of it. Slavery is 
recorded in the Bible, and approved, with many degrading character- 



248 



BIBLE TESTIMONY. 



istics. War is recorded in the Bible, and approved, under what 
seems to us the extreme of cruelty. But are slavery and war to endure 
forever because we find them in the Bible? or are they to cease at 
once and forever because the Bible inculcates peace and brother- 
hood?" 

The Haleys, the Legrees and the Peterkins of the South- 
boors of Vandalic hearts and minds — are, ever and anon mani- 
festing some of the most palpable and ridiculous idiosyncrasies 
of human nature. Ignorant of even the first lessons of a horn- 
book, they bandy among themselves, in traditionary order, 
certain garbled passages of Scripture, such, for instance, as 
that concerning poor old besotted Noah's delirious curse of 
Ham, which, in shame and pity be it said, they regard, or 
pretend to regard, as investing them with full and perfect 
license to practise and perpetuate their most unhallowed sys- 
tem of iniquity. Such are the hardened, crafty creatures in 
human form, who, following the example of their subtle sire, 
when he perched himself on a pinnacle of the temple at Jeru- 
salem, quote Scripture, without even the semblance of a blush, 
in the prosecution of their treasons, stratagems and spoils. 
Such are the veritable actors, who, with " Southside Doctors 
of Divinity," Bible in hand, as prompters, are unceasingly 
performing the horrible tragedy of Human Slavery. From 
all such gross and irreverent distorters of Biblical truth, good 
Lord deliver us ! 



CHAPTER VIII. 

TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

It was the intention of the fathers of the Constitution that liberty should be 
national and slavery sectional. James Madison, himself a slaveholder, one of 
the framers of the Constitution, afterward Governor of Virginia, and then 
President of the United States, tells us why slavery was not mentioned in that 
instrument. He said that, when the institution of slavery had ceased to exist 
in this land, they did not wish the memory of it to remain on record. . . . 
Shadows of the days that are past gather around me. I am standing as I have 
stood, as a reed shaken by the wind, as the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
ness. What argument have I not exhausted, to what sentiment have I no 
appealed? And I have called upon every living thing in vain; yet when I 
remember that all the experience of the ages is concentrated into our Consti- 
tution, I return once more to the charge, and I would that my voice could 
extend to every palace, and to every cabin throughout this wide Republic, that 
I might say to you, Arouse from your fatal delusion ; liberty and slavery can- 
not co-exist ; one or the other must die ! — Cassius M. Clay. 

The conflict between Freedom and Slavery is not simply a 
conflict between two diverse systems of labor, the one of 
which recognizes, while the other ignores the manhood of the 
laborer ; nor merely between two diverse polices, the one of 
which tends to enrich, and the other to impoverish society; 
but it is preeminently, a conflict between civilization with all 
its elevating and ameliorating influences, on the one side, 
and barbarism with all it rudeness and savagery, its igno- 
rance and contempt of humanity, on the other. The very 
existence of slavery is incompatible with the highest order of 
social life. Fetich-worship does not more certainly indicate 
the degradation of the religious ideas of a people than does 

11* 249 



250 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

the chattelization of humanity mark an incomplete civiliza- 
tion. This element of barbarism, lingering hi society wher- 
ever slavery lingers, makes itself particularly manifest in the 
present insane efforts of the oligarchy to reopen the foreign 
slave trade, not only at the expense of humanity and religion, 
but at the sacrifice of the national honor, and our position 
among the moral forces of the world. 

How strikingly contrasts with this savagery of barbarism 
the present attitude of the great Russian Empire, as repre- 
sented ha the policy of the reigning emperor, Alexander the 
Second ! With a far-seeing wisdom, which takes him out of 
the mob of vulgar potentates, and vindicates the kingship 
that belongs to a right royal nature, he has magnanimously 
resolved on the abolition of serfdom throughout his vast 
empire. The magnitude of the work proposed, considered 
simply in itself, and its still greater magnitude, considered in 
its fai*-reaching consequences, are beyond the grasp of any 
ordinary capacity, and must command for the young em- 
peror, Avho has determinedly given himself to it, the sym- 
pathy and admiration of all true statesmen, philanthropists, 
and friends of freedom throughout the world. His enterprise 
is a mightier one than that which tasked the energies of his 
renowned ancestor, Peter the Great ; and its successful accom- 
plishment will give him a far more legitimate and lasting 
claim on the love and reverence of mankind. The one con- 
solidated a great empire, the other will add millions of loyal 
subjects to it, by taking them out of the category of chattels, 
and giving them their proper status in the ranks of humanity. 
That this grand project will be crowned with success, the 
wisdom and energy with which the young emperor has set 
himself to the task, forbid us to doubt. And how it shames 
the despots of our own land, intent not only on the perpetu- 
ation of their pet barbarism, but on plunging the country 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 251 

into a still deeper slough of infamy and peril, by a reopening 
of the African slave trade, with all the bloody and sickening 
atrocities which it involves ! Verily, the boasted enlighten- 
ment of our slavery propagandists is about on a par with 
that of New Zealand, and may well challenge the admiration 
of " South-side Doctors of Divinity," who devoutly regard 
the kidnapper as God's divinest messenger of salvation to 
the heathen world ! 

But a truce to these thoughts of men and measures abroad, 
and now to the contemporaneous Alexanders and others of 
our own country, beginning with 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 

In his masterly speech at Rochester, on Monday, Oct. 25, 
1858, Senator Seward said: 

" Free labor and slave labor — these antagonistic systems are con- 
tinually coming into close contact, and collision results. Shall I tell 
you what this collision means ? They who think it is accidental, 
unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and there- 
fore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible 
conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the 
United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely 
a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the cot- 
ton and rice fields of South Carolina, and the sugar plantations of 
Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and 
New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else 
the rye fields and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York must 
again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture, and to the 
production of slaves, and Boston and Few York become once more 
markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men." 

At Buffalo, Friday, Oct. 19, 1855, he said : 

" I have seen slavery in the Slave States, and freedom in the Free 



252 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

States. I Lave seen both slavery and freedom in this State. I know- 
too well the evils of the former to be willing to spare any effort to 
prevent their return. The experience of New York tells the Avhole 
argument against slavery extension, the whole argument for univer- 
sal freedom. Suppose that, fifty years ago, New York, like Virginia, 
and Maryland, had clung to slavery, where now would have been 
these three composite millions of freemen, the choice and flower of 
Europe and America ? In that case, would superstition and false 
national pride have needed to organize a secret cabal, affiliated by un- 
lawful oaths, to proscribe the exile and his children for their nativity 
or their conscience' sake ? Where would then have been the Erie Canal, 
the Genesee Valley Canal, the Oswego Canal, the Seneca and Cayuga 
Canal, the Crooked Lake Canal, the Chemung Canal, the Chenango 
Canal, the Black Eiver Canal, the Champlain Canal— where the im- 
perial New York Central Eailroad, the Erie Kailroad, and the Ogdens- 
burgh Eailroad, with their branches penetrating not only every inha- 
bited district in this State, but every inhabited region also in adjacent 
States and in British America? Where would have been the colleges 
and academies, and, above all, the free common schools, yielding 
instruction to children of all sects and in all languages ? Where the 
asylums and other public charities, and, above all, that noble emi- 
grant charity which crowns the State with such distinguished honor ? 
Where these ten thousand churches and cathedrals, renewing on 
every recurring Sabbath day the marvel of Pentecost, when the 
sojourner from every land hears the Gospel of Christ preached to 
him in his own tongue ? Where would have been the steamers, the 
barges, brigs and schooners, which crowd this harbor of Buffalo, 
bringing hither the productions of the Mississippi Valley and of the 
Gulf coast, in exchange for the fabrics of the Atlantic coast and of 
Europe, and of the teas and spices of Asia? Where the coasting 
vessels, the merchant ships, the clippers, the whale ships, and the 
ocean mail steamers, which are rapidly concentrating in our great 
seaport the commerce of the world? Where the American Navy, at 
once the representative and champion of the cause of universal 
Republicanism? Where your inventors of steamboats, of electric 
telegraphs, and of planing machines ; where your ingenious artisans, 
where your artists, where your mighty Press, the 'Courier and Eu- 



TESTIMONY OF OTJR CONTEMPORARIES. 253 

quirer,' the ' Tribune,' the ' Times, 1 and even the ' Herald,' itself, defen- 
der of slavery as it is ? Where your twenty cities — and where, above 
all, the merry, laughing agricultural industry of native-born and 
exotic laborers, enlivening the whole broad landscape, from the 
Lake coast to the Ocean's side ? Go, ask Virginia — go, ask even 
noble Maryland, expending as she is a giant's strength in the ser- 
pent's coils, to show you her people, canals, railroads, universities, 
schools, charities, commerce, cities and cultivated acres. Her silence 
is your expressive answer." 

At Albany, Friday, Oct. 12, 1855, he said: 

" So long as the Eepublican party shall be firm and faithful to the 
Constitution, the Union, and the Eights of Man, I shall serve it, with 
the reservation of that personal independence which is my birthright, 
but at the same time with the zeal and devotion that patriotism al- 
lows and enjoins. I do not know, and personally I do not greatly 
care, that it shall work out its great ends this year, or the next, or 
ia my lifetime ; because I know that those ends are ultimately sure, 
and that time and trial are the elements which make all great reform- 
ations sure and lasting. I have not thus far lived for personal ends 
or temporary fame, and I shall not begin so late to live or labor for 
them. I have hoped that I might leave my country somewhat worth- 
ier of a lofty destiny, and the rights of human nature somewhat safer. 
A reasonable ambition must always be satisfied with sincere and 
practical endeavors. If, among those who shall come after us, there 
shall be any curious inquirer who shall fall upon a name so obscure 
as mine, he shall be obliged to confess that, however unsuccessfully 
I labored for generous ends, yet that I nevertheless was ever faithful, 
ever hopeful." 

SALMON P. CHASE. 

Addressing the Southern and Western Liberty Convention, 
at Cincinnati, June 11, 1845, Mr. Chase used the following 
unreserved, appropriate language : 

" It is our duty, and our purpose, to rescue the government from 



254 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

the control of the slaveholders; to harmonize its practical adminis- 
tration with the provisions of the Constitution, and to secure to all, 
without exception, and without partiality, the rights which the Con- 
stitution guarantees. "We believe that slaveholding, in the United 
States, is the source of numberless evils, moral, social and political; 
that it hinders social progress ; that it embitters public and private 
intercourse ; that it degrades us as individuals, as States and as a na- 
tion ; that it holds back our country from a splendid career of great- 
ness and glory. We are, therefore, resolutely, inflexibly, at all times, 
and under all circumstances, hostile to its longer continuance in our 
land. We believe that its removal can be effected peaceably, con- 
stitutionally, without real injury to any, with the greatest benefit 
to all. 

'• We propose to effect this by repealing all legislation, and discon- 
tinuing all action, in favor of slavery at home and abroad ; by pro- 
hibiting the practice of slaveholding in all places of exclusive national 
jurisdiction, in the District of Columbia, in American vessels upon 
the seas, in forts, arsenals, navy yards ; by forbidding the employ- 
in ent of slaves upon any public work; by adopting resolutions in 
Congress, declaring that slaveholding, in all States created out of 
national territories, is unconstitutional, and recommending to the 
others the immediate adoption of measures for its extinction within 
their respective limits ; and by electing and appointing to public sta- 
tion such men, and only such men, as openly avow our principles, 
and will honestly carry out our measures." 

CASSIUS M. CLAY. 

Of the great number of good speeches made by members 
of the Republican party during the Presidential campaigD of 
1850, it is, we believe, pretty generally admitted that the besl 
one was made by Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, who, at the Taber- 
nacle, in New York City, October 24th, said : 

"If there are no manufactures, there is no commerce. In vain do 
the slaveholders go to Knoxville, to Nashville, to Memphis and to 
Charleston, and resolve that they will have nothing to do with these 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 255 

* Abolition eighteen millions of Northern people ; that they will build 
their own vessels, manufacture their own goods, ship their own pro- 
ducts to foreign countries, and break down New York, Philadelphia 
and Boston ! Again they resolve and re-resolve, and yet there is not 
a single ton more shipped, and not a single article added, to the wealth 
of the South. But, gentlemen, they never invite such men as I am 
to attend their conventions. They know that I would tell them that 
Slavery is the cause of their poverty, and that I will tell them that 
what they are aiming at is the dissolution of the Union — that they 
may be prepared to strike for that whenever the nation rises. They 
well know that by slave labor the very propositions which they 
make can never be realized ; yet, when we show these things, they 
cry out, ' Oh, Cotton is King !' But when we look at the statistics, 
we find that so far from Cotton being King, Grass is King. There 
are nine articles of staple productions which are larger than that of 
cotton in this country. 

" I suppose it does not follow, because slavery is endeavoring to 
modify the great dicta of our fathers, that cotton and free labor are 
incompatible. In the extreme South, at New Orleans, the laboring 
men — the stevedores and hackmen on the levee, where the heat is 
intensified by the proximity of the red brick buildings — are all white 
men, and they are in the full enjoyment of health. But how about 
cotton ? I am informed by a friend of mine — himself a slaveholder, 
and therefore good authority — that in Northwestern Texas, among 
the German settlements, who, true to their national instincts, will 
not employ the labor of a slave, they produce more cotton to the 
acre, and of a better quality, and selling at prices from a cent to a 
cent and a half a pound higher than that produced by slave labor. 
This is an experiment that illustrates what I have always held, that 
whatever is right is expedient." 

JOHN CHARLES FREMONT. 

Accepting his nomination for the Presidency, in 1850, Mr. 
Fremont, one of the noblest sons of the South, said : 

" I heartily concur in all movements which have for their object 



25 ! TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

the repair of the mischiefs arising from the violation of good faith* 
in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. I am opposed to slavery 
in the abstract, and upon principles sustained and made habitual by 
long-settled convictions. I am inflexibly opposed to its extension on 
this continent beyond its present limits. 

" The great body of non-slaveholding freemen, including those of 
the South, upon whose welfare slavery is an oppression, will discover 
that the power of the general government over the public lands may 
be beneficially exerted to advance their interests and secure their 
independence ; knowing this, their suffrages will not be wanting to 
maintain that authority in the Union, which is absolutely essential to 
the maintenance of their own liberties, and which has more than once 
indicated the purpose of disposing of the public lands in such a way 
as would make every settler upon them a freeholder," 

CHARLES SUMNER. 

Speaking of the Crime against Kansas, in the United States 
Senate, on the 19th and 20th of May, 1850, Mr. Sumner, the 
scholarly and eloquent statesman — a gentleman and patriot, 
of whom it is not too much to say, there is not an ungenerous 
hair upon his head, nor an iota of discount in his composition 
—a prudent, fearless advocate of Free Labor, whom, ever since 
Brooks' dastardly assault upon him, on the 22d of May, 1856, 
we, as a Carolinian, have been eager (but have not yet had the 
opportunity) to grasp by the hand, and give from the South 
assurances of at least one hearty, unqualified condemnation 
of the outrage — said: 

" The wickedness which I now begin to expose is immeasurably 
aggravated by the motive which prompted it. Xot in any common 
lust for power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the 
rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of 
slavery ; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved longing for a 
new Slave State, the hideous oilspring of such a crime, in the hope 
of adding to the power of slavery in the national government. Yes, 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 257 

sir, when the whole world, alike Christian and Turk, is rising up to 
condemn this wrong, and to make it a hissing to the nations, here in 
our republic, force — aye, sir, force — has been openly employed in 
compelling Kansas to this pollution, and all for the sake of political 
power. There is the simple fact, which you will vainly attempt to 
deny, but which in itself presents an essential wickedness that makes 

other public crimes seem like public virtues In just 

regard for free labor in that Territory, which it is sought to blast by 
unwelcome association with slave labor; in Christian sympathy with 
the slave, whom it is proposed to task and to sell there ; in stern 
condemnation of the crime which has been consummated on that 
beautiful soil ; in rescue of fellow-citizens, now subjugated to a 
tyrannical usurpation ; in dutiful respect for the early Fathers, whose 
aspirations are now ignobly thwarted; in the name of the Constitu- 
tion, which has been outraged — of the laws, trampled down — or 
Justice banished — of Humanity degraded — of Peace destroyed — of 
Freedom crushed to earth ; and, in the name of the Heavenly Father, 
whose service is perfect freedom, I make this last appeal." 



HENRY WILSON. 

Replying to Mr. Hammond, of South Carolina, in the 
United States, March 20th, 1858, Gen. Wilson of Massachu- 
setts, said : 

"Fealty to the Administration, to the Democratic party, is now 
fealty to human slavery, to violence, to trickery, and to fraud. By 
perversions of the Constitution and the laws, by the red hand of vio- 
lence, by unveiled trickeries and transparent frauds, by the indecent 
proscription of men of inflexible integrity, by the shameless prostitu- 
tion of the honors of the government, and by the 'rank corruption, 
mining all within,' which 'infects unseen,' the administration is con- 
verting the American Democracy into a mere organization for the 
perpetuity, expansion, and domination of human slavery on the 
North American continent. There is not to-day, in all Christendom, 
a political organization so hostile to the rights of human nature, to 



258 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

the development of Republican ideas, to the general progress of tho 
human race, as the Democratic party of the United States. There is 
not a political organization, even in Spain, Russia, or Austria, that 
dares, in the face of the civilized world, blazon its banners with doc- 
trines so hostile to the rights of mankind, so abhorrent to humanity, 
as are avowed in these halls, and upheld by the American Demo- 
cracy, under the lead of this administration. The great powers of 
Europe, England, France and Russia, have fixed their hungry eyes 
upon the coveted prizes of the Eastern World ; and we are invoked 
to forget the lessons of Washington, to close our ears to the appeals 
of the people of Kansas, whose rights have been outraged, and turn 
our lustful eyes to the glittering prizes of dominion in Mexico, Cen- 
tral America, Cuba, and the valleys of the distant Amazon. No 
party in those three European monarchies dares avow, in the face of 
Christendom, the sentiment we have heard proclaimed in these halls, 
that territorial expansion, and territorial dominion must be made, 
not for the advancement of the sacred and sublime principle of equal 
and impartial liberty to all men, but for the subjugation and personal 
servitude of other and inferior races I tell the vaunt- 
ing senator from South Carolina that thousands of merchants, manu- 
facturers and mechanics of the North are this day, and have been for 
months, pressed with the burden of bearing the unpaid debts owed 
them by the Slave States. I remember that during the terrible press- 
ure of last year, while our business men were staggering under the 
pressure, thirteen out of fourteen wholesale merchants in one depart- 
ment of business in one Southern city, imposed upon their Eastern 
creditors the burden of renewing their matured notes. The merchants 
and manufacturers of the North have lost hundreds of millions of 
dollars during the last thirty years in the Slave States. I have per- 
sonally lost; in the senator's own State, in Louisiana, Virginia and 
Kentucky, thousands of dollars more than I am now able to com- 
mand." 



JOHN P. IIALE. 

In his speech on Kansas and the Supreme Court, delivered 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 259 

in the United States Senate, January 21st, 1858, Mr. Hale 
said : 

"Peace came in 1783 ; and in 1784 Thomas Jefferson, the immor- 
tal author of the immortal Declaration of Independence, hegan his 
labors in the Continental Congress, moving that all the territory we 
then owned, and all the territory that we might thereafter acquire, 
should be forever free from what he considered the contaminating 
and blighting influences of human slavery. Those who are laboring 
with me in this great contest may take courage from the persever- 
ance with which Jefferson adhered to his policy. In 1783-84- '85, 
and '86, the measure failed, but finally, in 1787, it partially succeeded, 
and the ordinance was passed prohibiting slavery from all the terri- 
tory which we then owned. Yet, sir, in view of all this history, 
written as with a sunbeam upon the very walls of the room in which 
this tribunal now assemble, they stand up in 1857, to declare to the 
world that the slave trade and slavery were so universally recognized 
and acknowledged, that nobody questioned the rightfulness of the 
traffic, and nobody supposed it capable of being questioned. Not con- 
tent with overturning the whole line of judicial authority to be 
found in every nation of Europe, and in every State of this Union, 
and of their own solemn recorded decision, they go on to make the 
avowal ; and then go further, and undertake to tear from that chap- 
let which adorns the brows of the men of the Revolution the proud- 
est and fairest of their ornaments ; and that was the sincerity of the 
professions which they made in regard to the rights of human nature. 
It is true, the court in their charity undertake to throw the mantle 
of ignorance over these men, and say they did not understand what 
they meant. Sir, they did understand it, and the country understood 
it. There was a jealfcusy on the subject of liberty and slavery at that 
time, of which we are little prepared to judge at the present day. 
It is found beaming out on the pages of the writings of all these 
men. 

" If the opinions of the Supreme Court are true, they put these 
men in the worst position of any men who are to be found on the 
pages of our history. If the opinion of the Supreme Court be true, 
it makes the immortal authors of the Declaration of Independence 



260 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

liars before God and hypocrites before the world ; for they lay 
down their sentiments broad, full, and explicit, and then they say 
that they appeal to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the recti- 
tude of their intentions ; but if you believe the Supreme Court, they 
were merely quibbling on words. They went into the courts of the 
Most High and pledged fidelity to their principles as the price they 
would pay for success ; and now it is attempted to cheat them out 
of the poor boon of integrity ; and it is said that they did not mean 
so ; and that when they said all men, they meant all white men ; 
and when they said that the contest they waged was for the right of 
mankind, the Supreme Court of the United States mmld have you 
believe they meant it was to establish slavery. Against that I pro- 
test, here, now, and everywhere ; and I tell the Supreme Court that 
these things are so impregnably fixed in the hearts of the people, on 
the page of history, in the recollections and traditions of men, that it 
will require mightier efforts than they have made or can make to 
overturn or to shake these settled convictions of the popxflar under- 
standing and of the popular heart." 

NATHANIEL P. BANKS. 

In the course of his great speech in Wall street, New York, 
on the 25th of September, 185G, Mr. Banks said : 

"For seventy-five years past the government of this country has 
been in the hands of Southern statesmen, who have directed its policy. 
The North has been busy in the mechanical arts, in agriculture, and 
in mining, and has given less attention to the affairs of the govern- 
ment than it otherwise might have done — certainly less than it ought 
to have done. On the contrary, the South, having no literature of 
its own, having no science of its own, having no mechanical and 
manufacturing industry of its own, having but little or no inventive 
power or genius of its own, having, in short, none of the elements of 
power that distinguish our civilization, has turned its attention chiefly, 
so far as its leading men are concerned, to the government of the 
country. Now, we of the North, propose to divide this little matter 
with them I should do wrong to our cause — the cause 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 261 

of the Northern States— if I failed to say that there are other influ- 
ences which we desire to exert by the elevation to the Presidency of 
the man of our choice. We ask that the dead weight of human 
wrong shall be lifted up from the Continent again, that it may rise as 
it was rising before these acts of wrong were done." 



EDWIN D. MORGAN. 

After calling to order the Convention which, in Philadel- 
phia, in June, 1856, nominated Mr. Fremont for President, 
and Mr. Dayton for Vice-President, Mr. Morgan, as Chairman 
of the Republican National Committee— now Governor of 
New York — said : 

"You are assembled for patriotic purposes. High expectations 
are cherished by the people. You are here to-day to give direction 
to a movement which is to decide whether the people of the United 
States are to be hereafter and forever chained to the present national 
policy of the extension of Human Slavery. Not whether the South 
is to rule, or the North ; but whether the broad, national policy which 
our fathers established, cherished, and maintained, is to be permitted 
to descend to their sons, to be the guiding star of all our people. 
Such is the magnitude of the question submitted. In its considera- 
tion let us avoid all extremes — plant ourselves firmly on the platform 
of the Constitution and the Union, taking no position which does 
not commend itself to the judgment of our consciences, our country, 
and of mankind. Of the wisdom of such a policy there need be no 
doubt ; against it there can be no successful resistance." 

EDWARD WADE. 

In his speech on the Slavery question, in the House of Re- 
presentatives, August 2, 1856, Mr. Wade said : 

"Inherent and fundamental right of freedom of speech and the 
press, does not and cannot exist in slaveholding communities. This 



262 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

is a necessity of despotic governments, it is more than a necessity of 
despotism, it is in itself the essence of despotism. There is not 
a more morbidly suspicious, cruel, revengeful, or lawless des- 
potism on the face of the earth, than the nightmare of slavery, 
which has settled down upon the people of the slaveholding 
States, with flhe exception of perhaps two or three of these States. 
There is more freedom of speech and of the press to-day, and more 
personal safety in the exercise of such freedom, at Vienna, St. Peters- 
burg, Paris, or Eome, in an attack and exposure of the despotism 
which reigns supreme over those cities, than there is at Eichmond, 
Charleston, Milledgeville, or Mobile, to attack and expose the slave- 
holding despotisms which rule over these cities with a rod of iron. 
There are probably more citizens, born and nurtured in the Slave 
States, now in exile from their native States for the exercise of free- 
dom of speech and the press, against the despotism of slaveholding, 
than there are from Austria, Russia, France, or the Two Sicilies, for 
the exercise of the same rights against the despotisms which crush 
those nations." 

EDWARD BATES. 

In a letter bearing date March. 17, 1860, in reply ton com- 
mittee of his political friends in St. Louis, Judge Bates, of 
Missouri (a native of Virginia), says : 

" On the subject of Slavery, in the States and in the Territories, I 
have no new opinions — no opinions formed in relation to the present 
array of parties. I am coeval with the Missouri question of 1819-20 
having begun my political life in the midst of that struggle. At that 
time my position required me to seek all the means of knowledge 
within my reach, and to study the principles involved with all the 
powers of my mind ; and I arrived at conclusions then, which no sub- 
sequent events have induced me to change. The existence of negro 
slavery in our country had its beginning in the early time of the 
Colonics, and was imposed by the mother country, against the will 
of most of the Colonies. At the time of the Revolution, and long 
after, it was commonly regarded as an evil, temporary in its nature, 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 263 

and likely to disappear in the course of time, yet, while it continued, 
a misfortune to the country, socially and politically. 

" Thus was I taught by those who made our government, and 
neither the new light, or modern civilization, nor the discovery of a 
new system of constitutional law and social philosophy, has enabled 
me to detect the error of their teaching. 

"Slavery is a social relation — a domestic institution. Within the 
States, it exists by the local law, and the Federal Government has no 
control over it there. The Territories, whether acquired by con- 
quest or peaceable purchase, are subject and subordinate ; not sove- 
reign, like the States. The nation is supreme over them, and the 
National Government has the power to permit or forbid Slavery 
within them. Entertaining these views, I am opposed to the exten- 
sion of slavery, and in my opinion, the spirit and policy of the go- 
vernment ought to be against its extension." 



ABRAM LINCOLN. 

In his speech on National Politics, at the Cooper Institute, 
New York, February 27, 1860, Mr. Lincoln, of Illinois (a 
native of Kentucky), who, according to the popular vote of 
his State, is entitled to, but unfairly debarred from, the seat 
in the United States Senate now occupied by Mr. Douglas, 
said : 

a Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone 
where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its 
actual presence in the nation ; but can we, while our votes will pre- 
vent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to over- 
run us here in. these Free States ? If our sense of duty forbids this, 
then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. ... It 
is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great confederacy shall 
be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us, Republicans, 
do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do 

nothing through passion and ill temper In the language 

of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, ' It is still in our power to 



264 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably, and in 
such slow degrees, as that the evil "will wear off insensibly ; and their 
places be, pari 2)assu, filled up by free white laborers.' " 

In the course of his memorable controversies with Mr. 
Douglas, in Illinois, in the summer of 1858 (three months 
before Mr. Seward made his famous " irrepressible conflict " 
speech at Rochester), Mr. Lincoln said: 

" I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any Abolition- 
ist. I have always hated it, and I always believed it in the course 
of ultimate extinction. If I were in Congress, and a vote should 
come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new 
Territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it 
should. .... I believe this government cannot endure perma- 
nently, half slave and half free. It will become all one thing, or all 
the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further 
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the be- 
lief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates 
will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States 
— old as well as new — North as well as South." 



FRANCIS P. BLAIR, SEN. 

In the course of an address to the Republicans of Maryland 
— his own State — in 1856, Mr. Blair said: 

" In every aspect in which slavery among us can be considered, it 
is pregnant with difficulty. Its continuance in the States in which 
it has taken root has resulted in the monopoly of the soil, to a great 
extent, in the hands of the slaveholders, and the entire? control of all 
departments of the State government ; and yet a majority of people 
in the Slave States are not slaveowners. This produces an anomaly 
in the principle of our free institutions, which threatens in time to 
bring into subjugation to slaveowners the great body of the free 
white population." 



TESTIMONY OF OUP CONTEMPORARIES. 265 



FRANK P. BLAIR, JR. 

In his speech at Concord, New Hampshire, February 2, 
1859, Mr. Blair, of Missouri, of whom the non-slaveholders of 
the South have high hopes in the future, said : 

"There is no other question before the country than that of 
slavery. It is the all-absorbing topic in every political circle. Upon 
this issue I have long since taken my ground against its extension 
and perpetuation. I believe that slavery should be restricted to its 
present limits, and that Congress should do all which lies in its power 
to prevent the perpetuation of this evil. I know that Congress has 
no power to interfere with it where it at present exists within the 
States ; and yet I doubt not that when the Republican party takes 
possession of the General Government, and the corrupting patronage 
of the administration is diverted from its present channels, we shall" 
be able to show the little oligarchy of slaveholders some things of 
which they little dream even within the States. . . . Although 
the institution of slavery is to be condemned, because it deprives the 
slave of everything except his bread and butter, and clothing, and 
shelter in winter, it merits more decided condemnation on another 
ground. It deprives the poor whites of the South of every aspiration 
which appertains to anything nobler than their bodies. It deprives 
them of the exercise of their intellects, of schools, education and cul- 
ture, no less than of the bread of themselves and their children. I 
am more opposed to the institution on this ground than on any other, 
because it is our own race, the white race, which is here trampled 
upon — a race of workingmen and mechanics like yourselves. Slavery 
is the most odious institution ever known. It is essentially and vitally 
aristocratic. IIow dare these men stand up here and call themselves 
Democrats, while they have a race of whites pressed down under a 
twofold stratum of slaves and slaveowners. I appeal to the people 
of Xew Hampshire to lend a helping hand to this oppressed race. 
Toward them the friends of slavery intrench themselves in exclusive 
rights of a twofold nature. The negro slave is instructed in all the 
mechanical arts for the benefit of his master, and the white non- 
12 



266 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

slaveholder is thus excluded from all opportunities for elevating his 
family or providing for their wants." 



GERRIT SMITH. 

In his speech on the Nebraska bill, delivered in the House 
of Representatives, April 6, 1854, Mr. Smith said: 

" The slavery question is up again — up again even in Congres ! It 
will not be kept down. At no bidding, however authoritative, will 
it keep down. The President of the United States commands it to 
keep down. Indeed he has, hitherto, seemed to make the keeping 
down of this question the great end of his great office. Members of 
Congress have so far humbled themselves, as to pledge themselves on 
this floor to keep it down. National political conventions promise 
to discountenance, and even to resist the agitation of slavery, both in 
and out of Congress. Commerce and politics are as afraid of this 
agitation as Macbeth was of the ghost of Banquo : and many titled 
divines, taking their cue from commerce and politics, and being no 
less servile than merchants and demagogues, do what they can to 
keep the slavery question out of sight. Cut all is of no avail. The 
saucy slavery question will not mind them. To repress it in one 
quarter, is only to have it burst forth more prominently in another 
quarter. If you hold it back here, it will break loose there, and rush 
forward with an accumulated force, that shall amply revenge for all 
its detention. And this is not strange, when we consider how great 
is the power of truth. It were madness for man to bid the grass not 
to grow, the waters not to run, the winds not to blow. It were mad- 
ness for him to assume the mastery of the elements of the physical 
world. But more emphatically were it madness for him to attempt 
to hold in his puny fist the forces of the moral world. Canute's 
folly, in setting bounds to the sea, was wisdom itself, compared with 
the so much greater folly of attempting to subjugate the moral forces. 
Now, the power which is, ever and anon, throwing up the slavery 
question into our unwilling and affrighted faces, is Truth. The pas- 
sion-blinded and the infatuated may not discern this mighty agent. 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 267 

Nevertheless, Truth lives and reigns forever; and 'she will be, con- 
tinually, tossing up unsettled questions. We must bear in mind, too, 
that every question, which has not been disposed of in conformity 
with her requirements, and which has not been laid to repose on her 
own blessed bosom, is an unsettled question. Hence, Slavery is an 
unsettled question, and must continue such, until it shall have fled 
forever from the presence of Liberty." 

JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 

In his speech on American Piracy, in Committee of the 
whole House, on the state of the Union, June 7, 1858, Mr. 
Giddings said : 

" Every man who sells a slave thereby encourages the slave trade ; 
and no reflecting mind can regard the coastwise slave trade less cri- 
minal than that which is carried on upon the shores of Africa. In 
truth, it was born of the African trade, and in its effects it is more 
atrocious, as its victims are more intelligent. It is thus that the 
African slave trade, the coastwise slave trade, the inter-State slave 
trade, the holding of slaves, the breeding of slaves, the selling and 
buying of slaves, are all connected and interwoven in one general 
network of moral turpitude, constituting an excrescence, a cancer 
upon the body politic of our nation. The African slave trade consti- 
tutes the germ, the root, from which our American slave trade, and 
all the various relations of that institution in this country, have 
sprung. If the tree be piracy, it is clear that its fruit can be nothing 
else than piracy ; and when the nation stamped that commerce as 
piratical, it proclaimed the guilt of every man who voluntarily con- 
nects himself with slavery." 

OWEN LOVEJOT. 

In the House of Representatives of the United States, 
April 5, 1860, Mr. Lovejoy, representing the third Congres- 
sional district of Illinois, said : 



268 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

"The Republican party, of -which I am a member, stands pledged, 
since 1850, to the extermination, so far as the Federal Government 
has the power, of the twin relics of barbarism, Slavery and Polygamy. 
"We anticipate that a death-blow has been given to one of these 
twins, and I now propose to pay my respects to the other. I want 
to see them both strangled and go down together, as they both richly 
deserve. . . . If the strong of the earth are to enslave the weak 
here, it would justify angels in enslaving men, because they are 
superior ; and archangels, in turn, would be justified in subjugating 
those who are inferior in intellect and position, and ultimately it 
would transform Jehovah, the Supreme, into an infinite Juggernaut, 
rolling the huge wheels of his Omnipotence, ankle deep, amid the 
crushed, and mangled, and bleeding bodies of human beings, on the 
ground that lie was infinitely superior, and that they were an infe- 
rior race. . . . My honest conviction — and I do not know why 
gentlemen need take offence ; they need not unless they choose — my 
honest conviction is that all these slaveholding laws have the same 
moral power and force that l'ules among pirates have for the distri- 
bution of their booty ; that regulations among robbers have for the 
division of their spoils; and although I do not believe gentlemen 
have behaved veiy handsomely to me, I am going to add, notwith- 
standing, lb at I do not mean to say that gentlemen who are slave- 
holders would be guilty of these particular things — that is not the 
point. I am talking about this master in the court, of conscience, in 
the court of right and wrong; and I insist that any laws for enslav- 
ing men have just the same moral force as the arrangement among 
robbers and pirates for distributing their spoils. I want to know by 
what right you can come and make me a slave ? I want to know by 
what right you can say that my child shall be your slave ? I Avant 
to know by what right you say that the mother shall not have her 
child, given to her from God, through the martyrdom of maternity? 
. . . Before the public sentiment of the Christian and civilized 
world, I propose to hold up to universal reprobation this practice of 
slaveholding. I propose to hold it up in all its atrocity, in all its 
hideousness, just as gentlemen have been holding up the practice of 
polygamy, and reprobating it ; and, sir, that public sentiment of the 
civilized world will burn upon this practice of slavery, and ultimately 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 269 

secure its removal in the only proper way — by the action of the 
Slave States themselves. . . . Put every crime perpetrated 
among men into a moral crucible, and dissolve and combine them all, 
and the resultant amalgam is slaveholding. . . . The future 
glory and usefulness of this nation cannot be sacrificed to this system 
of crime. The nations of the earth are to be taught by our example. 
The American Republic may repose queen among the nations of the 
earth. Slavery must die." 



JOHN SHERMAN. 

In the course of his speech on the History and Policy of 
the Republican party, at the Cooper Institute, New York, 
April 13, 18G0, Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, said: 

" Republicans will not interfere, directly or indirectly, with 
slavery in the Slave States; not because they think slavery less an 
evil in a State than in a territory, but because, under our system of 
government, we of the Free States have no constitutional power to 
interfere with slavery in the States. It is not because we like the 
system, for we do not. It is scarcely possible for a man born and 
bred in a Free State to regard with favor a system under which men, 
women, and children are the absolute property of others—liable to 
be separated at the caprice or necessity of their masters ; a system 
by which men, I care not of what color or how low in the scale of 
intelligence, may be and are reduced to the level of brutes, and de- 
prived of every distinctive right of humanity. The very fact that 
four millions of human beings are held in this condition in a Republic 
like ours, and that such servitude does not exist to anything like the 
same extent elsewhere, will always be a disturbing element in Ame- 
rican politics. "While we admit we have no power over the institu- 
tion in the Southern States, and will not attempt to exercise any, we 
will, in common with the civilized world, entertain the hope that by 
the voluntary action of the States where the institution exists, the 
condition of the slaves will be gradually ameliorated and changed, 
until the great principle that every man has a right to the proceeds 



270 TESTIMONY OF OUE CONTEMPORARIES. 

of his own labor, may be recognized from one end of the land to the 
other. . . . The Eepnblicau party affirms that Slavery is a social, 
moral, and political evil, and that it is the right and duty of Congress 
and of the people to prevent its extension into free territory. . . . 
In the North opinion is free ; and wherever opinion is free, the right 
is more than a match for the wrong. Here any one may extol the 
beauties of slavery, polygamy, Mohammedanism — of anything and 
everything. He may write about it, talk about it, preach about it. 
Here we are not afraid of a tract, a book, or a speech. Freedom of 
discussion always begets difference of opinion. In the South, opinion 
upon the slavery question is not free ; the most moderate opinions' 
against slavery cannot there be uttered safely. The mails are opened 
and robbed ; Northern men are watched as enemies ; books are 
burned, as Bibles have been in times past. There is no open channel 
through which the Southern mind can be reached upon the subject 
of slavery." 



ANSON BURLING AM E. 

In Ins defence of Massachusetts, in the House of Represen- 
tatives, June 21, 1856, Mr. Burlingame said: 

" Freedom and slavery started together in the great race on this 
continent. In the very year the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth 
Rock, slaves landed in Virginia. Freedom has gone on trampling 
down barbarism, and planting States — building the symbols of its 
faith by every lake, and every river, until now the sons of the Pil- 
grims stand by the shores of the Pacific. Slavery has also made its 
way toward the setting sun. It has reached the Rio Grande on the 
South ; and the groans of its victims, and the clank of its chains, may 
be heard as it slowly ascends the western tributaries of the Missis- 
sippi River. Freedom has left the land bespangled with free schoi >ls, 
and filled the whole heavens with the shining towers of religion and 
civilization. Slavery has left desolation, ignorance and death, in its 
path. When we look at these things; when we see what the coun- 
try would have been had freedom been given to the territories ; when 



TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES. 271 

we think what it would have been but for this blight in the bosom 
of the country ; that the whole South — that fair land God lias blessed 
so much — would have been covered with cities, and villages, and 
railroads, and that in the country, in place of twenty-five millions of 
people, thirty-five millions would have hailed the rising morn, ex- 
ulting in republican liberty — when we think of these things', how 
must every honest man — how must every man with brains in his 
bead, or heart in his bosom — regret that the policy of old Virginia, 
in her better days, did not become the animating policy of this ex- 
panding Eepublic!" 

GALUSHA A. GROW. 

In his speech against the Lecompton Constitution, delivered 
in the House of Representatives, March 25, 1858, Mr. Grow 
said : 

" Peace among a brave people is not the fruit of injustice, nor does 
agitation cease by the perpetration of wrong. For a third of a cen- 
tury, the advocates of slavery, while exercising unrestricted speech 
in its defence, have struggled to prevent all discussion against it — in 
the South, by penal statutes, mob law, and brute force ; in the North, 
by dispersing assemblages of peaceable citizens, pelting their lectur- 
ers, burning their halls, and destroying their presses ; in this forum 
of the people, by finality resolves on all laws for the benefit of 
slavery, not, however, to affect those in behalf of freedom, and by 
attempts to stifle the great constitutional right of the people at all 
times to petition their government. Yet despite threats, mob law, 
and finality resolves, the discussion goes on, and will continue to, so 
long as right and wrong, justice and injustice, humanity and inhu- 
manity, shall struggle for supremacy in the affairs of men." 

• 

ROBERT J. BRECKENRIDGE. 

In "The African Repository" for January, 1834, the Rev. 
Mr. Breckenridge, D.D., then a citizen of Baltimore, now a 



272 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

resident of Kentucky (uncle of the present Vice-President of 
the United States), treats the subject of slavery in a very able 
and somewhat lengthy article, frQin which we make the fol- 
lowing extracts : 

" What is slavery as it exists among us ? We reply, it is that con- 
dition enforced by the laws of one half the States of this confederacy, 
in which one portion of the community, called masters, is allowed 
such power over another portion, called slaves ; as — 

"1. To deprive them of the entire earnings of their own labor, 
except only so much as is necessary to continue labor itself, by con- 
tinuing healthful existence, thus committing clear robbery. 

" 2. To reduce them to the necessity of universal concubinage, by 
denying to them the civil rights of marriage ; thus breaking up the 
dearest relations of life, and encouraging universal prostitution. 

" 3. To deprive them of the means and opportunities of moral and 
intellectual culture, in many States making it a high penal offence to 
teach them to read ; thus perpetuating whatever evil there is that 
proceeds from ignorance. 

"4. To set up between parents and their children an authority 
higher than the impulse of nature and the laws of God, which breaks 
up the authority of the. father over his own offspring, and, at pleasure, 
separates the mother at a returnless distance from her child, thus ab- 
rogating the clearest laws of nature ; thus outraging all decency and 
justice, and degrading and oppressing thousands upon thousands of 
beings created like themselves, in the image of the most high God ! 

" Do we talk of violating the rights of masters, and depriving 
them of their property in their slaves? And will some one tell us 
if there be anything in which a man has, or can have, so perfect a 
right of property, as in his own limbs, bones and sinews '{ Out upon 
such fully! The man who cannot see that involuntary domestic 
slavery, as it exists among us, is founded upon the principle of taking 
by force that which is another's, lias simply no moral sense. And he 
who presumes that God will approve and reward habitual injustice 
and wrong, is ignorant alike of God and of his own heart. It is 
equally easy to apply to the institution of slavery every law of 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 273 

Christianity, and show its repugnaifce to each and every one of them. 
Undeniably it is contrary to the revealed will of God 

Slavery cannot endure. The just, and generous, and enlightened 
hearts and minds of those who own the slaves will not allow the 
system to endure. State after State, the example has caught and 
spread, New England, New York, the middle States on the sea 
board ; one after another have taken the question up, and decided it, 
all alike. The state of slavery is ruinous to the community that 
tolerates it, under all possible circumstances, and is most cruel and 
unjust to its victims. No community that can be induced to examine 
the question will, if it be wise, allow such a canker in its vitals ; nor, 
if it be just, will permit such wrong. We argue from the nature of 
the case, and the constitution of man ; we speak from the experience 
of the States already named ; we judge from what is passing before 
us in the range of States along the slave line — in Maryland, Virginia 
and Kentucky ; from the state of feeling on this subject in foreign 
countries; and from the existing state of opinion throughout the 
world. The very owners of slaves will themselves, and that, we 
hope, at no distant day, put an end to the system 

" We have spoken of the children of slaves ; and here lies one of 
the most abhorrent features of slavery. Men may become slaves, 
perhaps for life, for crimes lawfully proven. But no absurdity can 
be more inconceivably gross than to think of making slaves of the 
unborn ; and no injustice more audacious, than that which makes 
misfortune and crime descend from father to son, and dooms the 
child of Africans to perpetual slavery for no better reason than that 

his parents had been thus doomed before him Every 

community is bound to administer justice between its citizens ; and 
justice can never permit one man to take, without return, the labor 
of another, and that by force. Will the slaveholder say he returns 
to his slaves in the long run as much as he takes from them ? If 
this were true, it is no answer; for society is bound to see the slave 
paid and righted, on fixed principles, and may not lawfully leave the 
subject to the owner's discretion. Again, justice has nothing to do 
with such lumping accounts, as those which place hundreds in a 
mass, and rob one healthy, strong laborer, to make up for the de- 
ficiency in the cases of many weak and worthless. What excuse is 

12* 



274 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

it for him who would plunder u1, that he has attempted before to 
rob others, and failed? Society is bound, and that now and always, 
to see that every man in it is fairly dealt by, and justly paid by every 
other man in it ; and every human being is bound to do justice 
always, to everybody. Eveu the master who believes — and this he 
may, in many cases, believe wisely and righteously — that he ought 
not to set his slaves free in their existing condition, becomes thereby, 
only the trustee for them, of the entire proceeds of their labor ; and 
has no more right to put it in his pocket, than to apply to his own 
use the estates of his ward. This, the reader may say, would soon 
bring slavery to an end. Doubtless ; and the remark shows that it 
is only for its supposed profits, and not from public or conscientious 
considerations, that slavery is so widely tolerated. . . . Slavery 
cannot be made perpetual. The progress of free and just opinions is 
sapping its foundations everywhere. In regard to this country, no 
political proposition is capable of a clearer proof than that slavery 
must terminate." 



SAMUEL M. JANNEY. 

In a small pamphlet entitled " Slavery in Maryland," Mr. 
Janney, of Virginia, says : 

" It is no longer a contest merely on behalf of the slave, but the 
question is now to be settled, whether the liberties of the Anglo- 
Saxon race are to be preserved ! Throughout a lax-ge portion of the 
Southern States the non-slaveholding whites are no longer free ; a 
padlock Las been placed on their mouths, the freedom of the press is 
subverted, and they enjoy less liberty in the expression of tbeir 
opinions than the subjects of many European monarchies." 



M. F. MATTEY. 

In an article on Southern Direct Trade, published in 
De Bow's " Industrial Resources of the South," Lieut. 
Maury, director of the United States Observatory, in Wash- 



TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES. 275 

ington City, and to whom has been awarded so much well- 
merited praise in the world of science, says : 

" The fact must be obvious to the far-reaching minds of our 
statesmen, that unless some means of relief 'be devised, some chan- 
nel afforded, by which the South can, when the time comes, get rid 
of the excess of her slave population, she will be ultimately found 
with regard to this institution, in the predicament of the man with 
the wolf by the ears ; too dangerous to hold on any longer, and 
equally dangerous to let go. To our mind, the event is as certain to 
happen as any event which depends on the contingencies of the 
future, viz. : that unless means be devised for gradually relieving the 
slave States from the undue pressure of this class upon them — unless 
some way be opened by which they may be rid of their surplus 
black population — the time will come — it may not be in the next 
nor in the succeeding generation — but, sooner or later, come it will, 
and come it must — when the two races will join in the death strug- 
gle for the mastery." 

SYDNEY HOWARD GAY. 

Mr. Gay, one of the editors of the " New York Tribune," 

says : 

"There are in this Eepublic, possibly, three hundred thousand 
slaveholders, whose interest it is to extend and perpetuate slavery ; 
and certainly no less than twenty-five millions of persons, who, what- 
ever their interests may be, when weighed by the laws of political 
economy, have unquestionably the right* to think as they please, and 
say what seems to them good, either as to the character of that in- 
stitution where it exists already, or upon the expediency of transplant- 
ing it to territory where it now has no existence. This proposition is 
too self-evident to need any argument in its support. If it is not, 
then our form of democratic government is a delusion and a snare, 
our assertion of the inalienable rights of humanity an absurd and per- 
nicious sham. Nevertheless, the obvious and mortifying commentary 
upon it is, that a small faction of the people not only pretend to die- 



27.6 TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES 

tate to the great majority what they shall think and what they shall 
do, upon this subject, but institute measures of coercion submitted to 
by multitudes of persons, in a spirit which shows them to be, if 
not the most cowardly and abject slaves, only exempt from being so 
because it pleased the Almighty God to give them birth in Northern 
households rather than upon Southern plantations. That such is the 
fact— that such presumption should exist on the one part, and be sub- 
mitted to on the other, has, in a certain view of it, a ludicrous aspect. 
There is another, however, in which we can see it, only as a source 
of the intensest and most mortifying humiliation, and a subject of 
serious reflection as to the future of a people where two such moral 
elements are at work." 

WILLIAM CURTIS NOTES. 

In the course of his speech at the Republican Festival, at 
the Gramercy House, in New York city, February 22, 18G0, 
Mr. Xoyes said : 

" "What the Republican party proposes to do is to be done lawfully, 
under the Constitution; by force of persuasion and argument, by the 
operation of deliberate conviction peaceably pi-oduced, and not by 
violence or outrage, or by a wanton disregard of the decisions of the 
court. Further, we do not propose, in the event of the election of 
a President who does not suit us — whose political opinions do not 
agree with our own — to dissolve the Union. "We leave that matter 
entirely for our Southern brethren 

" I maintain that it was the design and understanding of the frainers 
of the Constitution, that slavery should cease by the gradual opera- 
tion of laws to be passed^by the several States in which it existed at 
the time of its formation. That sentiment is found in the speeches, 
in the public newspapers, in every source of information to which we 
can resort for the opinions which prevailed at that day. It is found, 
indeed, in the Constitution itself, because, after twenty years, the 
importation of slaves was expressly forbidden, in order to prevent 
their increase. We at the North have observed that implied stipula- 
tion. We have observed it because slavery was wrong in itself, 



TESTIMONY OF ODE CONTEMPORARIES. 277 

injurious to the best interests of the country, destructive of the pro- 
gress of freedom, and a violation of the spirit of the instrument, and 
especially of the Declaration of Independence, out of which that 
instrument grew; and it has not been till lately that the Southern 
people have maintained a contrary doctrine, and insisted that slavery 
not only existed in the States under the Constitution, but was carried 
by it into the Territories. Now, is it carried into the Territories by 
the Constitution of the United States? I maintain that it is not; 
and while I shall not go into the legal argument upon that subject, I 
will state some views that seem to me to have an important bearing 
upon it. It is said to have been decided in the Dred Scott case that 
slavery does exist in the Territories in virtue of the Constitution of 
the United States ; but as I have already intimated, that was not a 
binding judgment, the point not being necessarily before the court. 
It was so declared at the time by several of the judges. I believe 
the court will review that obiter die turn, and come to a different con- 
clusion. That decision, however, goes upon the ground that the spirit 
of the instrument sanctions slavery, and that it protects slaves as 
property, because fugitive slaves are required to be surrendered. It 
is conceded that there is no express provision upon the subject. It 
is claimed as incidentally inferable because property in slaves is sub- 
stantially protected ; so that the remark has been well made that the 
only property protected or recognized by the Constitution of the 
United States, is property in Patents and in Negroes!" 

HENRY RUFF^EK. 

In an "Address to the people of -West Virginia, showing 
that Slavery is injurious to the public welfare, and that it 
may be gradually abolished, without detriment to the rights 
and interests of slaveholders," printed by R. C. Noel, in 
Lexington, Va., in 184V, the Rev. Mr. Euffner, D.D., of 
Kanawha Saline (in Kanawha County, Va.), says : 

"TVe esteem it a sad, a humiliating fact, that should penetrate the 
heart of every Virginian, that from the year 1700 to this time, T/ir- 



278 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

ginia has lost more people by emigration than all the old Free States 
together. Up to 1840, when the last census was taken, she had lost 
more by nearly three hundred thousand. She has sent, or we should 
rather say, she has driven from her soil at least one third of all the 
emigrants who have gone from the old States to the new. More than 
another third have gone from the other old Slave States. Many of 
these multitudes who have left the Slave States have shunned the re- 
gions of slavery, and settled in the free countries of the West. These 
were generally industrious and enterprising white men, who found, 
by sad experience, that a country of slaves was not the country for 
them. It is a truth, a certain truth, that slavery drives free laborers 
— farmers, mechanics, and all, and some of the best of them, too — 
out of the country, and fills their places with negroes. . . . 

" What is it but slavery that makes Marylanders and Carolinians, 
and especially old Virginians and new Virginians, fly their country at 
such a rate ? Some go because they dislike slavery, and desire to get 
away from it ; others, because they have gloomy forebodings of 
what is to befall the Slave States, and wish to leave their families in 
a country of happier prospects ; others, because they cannot get pro- 
fitable employment among slaveholders ; others, industrious and high- 
spirited workingmen, will not stay in a country where slavery de- 
grades the workingman ; others go because they see that their coun- 
try, for some reason, does not prosper, and that other countries, not 
far off, are prospering, and will afford better hopes of prosperity to 
themselves ; others — a numerous class — who are slaveholders, and 
cannot live without slaves, finding that they cannot live longer with 
them on their worn-out soils, go to seek better lands, and more pro- 
fitable crops, where slave labor may yet for a while enable them and 
their children to live. . . . Our great Virginia, with all her 
natural facilities for trade, brings to her ports only about one five- 
hundredth part of the goods, wares, and merchandise imported into 
the United States. Shall we be told that the cause of this decline of 
Virginia commerce is the growth of Northern cities, which, by means 
of their canals and railroads and vast capital, draw off the trade from 
smaller ports to themselves ? And what then ? The cause assigned 
is, itself, the effect of a prior cause. We would ask those who take 
this superficial view of the matter, why should the great commercial 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 279 

ports be all outside of Virginia, and near or in the Free States ? "Why 
should every commercial improvement, every wheel that speeds the 
movements of trade, serve but to carry away from the Slave States 
more and more of their wealth for the benefit of the great Northern 
cities ? . . . And then, fellow-citizens, when you have suffered 
your country to be filled with negro slaves instead of white freemen, 
when its population shall be as motley as Joseph's coat of many col- 
ors — as ringstreaked and speckled as father Jacob's flock was in 
Padan-aram — what will the white basis of representation avail you if 
you obtain it ? Whether you obtain it or not, East Virginia will 
have triumphed, or rather slavery will have triumphed, and all Vir- 
ginia will have become a land of darkness and of the shadow of death. 
Then, by a forbearance which has no merit, and a supineness which 
has no excuse, you will have given to your children, for their inherit- 
ance, this lovely land blackened with a negro population — the off- 
scourings of Eastern Virginia — the fag-end of slavery — the loath- 
some dregs of that cup of abomination which has already sickened to 
death the eastern half of our commonwealth. . . . Behold in the 
East the doleful consequences of letting slavery grow up to an op- 
pressive and heart-sickening burden upon a community. Cast it off, 
West Virginians, while yet you have the power, for if you let it de- 
scend unbroken to your children, it will have grown to a mountain 
of misery upon their heads." 



STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 

In his " Science of Society," Mr. Andrews says : 

"If, in any transaction, I get from you some portion of your earn- 
ings without an equivalent, I begin to make you my slave — to confis- 
cate you to my uses ; if I get a larger portion of your services with- 
out an equivalent, I make you still further my slave ; and, finally, if 
I obtain the whole of your services without an equivalent — except 
the means of keeping you in a working condition for my own sake, 
I make you completely my slave. Slavery is merely one development 
of a general system of human oppression, for which wo have no com- 



280 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

prehensive term in English, but which the French Socialists denomi- 
nate exploitation — the abstraction, directly, or indirectly, from the 
working classes of the fruits of their labor. In the case of the slave, 
the instrument of that abstraction is force and legal enactments. In 
the case of the laborer, generally, it is speculation in the lar-v -en.-c, 
or profit-making. The slaveholder will be found, therefore, upon a 
scientific analysis, to hold the same relation to the trader which the 
freebooter holds to the blackleg. It is a question of taste which to 
admire most, tbe dare-devil boldness of the one, or the oily and in- 
triguing propensities and performances of the other." 



LYSAiNDEE SPOONEE. 

In his unanswered, unanswerable " Unconstitutionality of 
Slavery," Mr. Spooner says : 

"The injustice to the North that is involved in allowing slave-:, 
who can have no rights in the government, who can owe it no al- 
legiance, who are necessarily its enemies, and who therefore weaken, 
instead of supporting it — the injustice and inequality of allowing such 
persons to be represented at all in competition with those who alone 
have rights in the government, and who alone support it, is so pal- 
pable and monstrous, as utterly to forbid any such construction being 
put upon language that does not necessarily mean it. The absurdity, 
also, of such a representation is, if possible, equal to its injustice. 
We have no right — legal rules, that are universally acknowledged, 
imperatively forbid us — unnecessarily to place upon the language of 
an instrument a construction, that either stultifies the parties to it 
to euch a degree as the slave construction does the people of the 
North, or that makes them consent to having such glaring and out- 
rageous injustice practised upon them." 



WILLIAM BIENEY. 

As a native of Alabama, knowing well of that whereof he 
speaks, Mr. Birney (son of the late James G. Birney) says : 



TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES. 281 

" A third element of the political power of slaveholders is the vast 
constitutional privileges they enjoy, procured by their united action, 
wealth, and intelligence. In all the Slave States, with, as we believe, 
but one exception, slave property is represented in the legislatures. 
This rule may give a district composed of one hundred voters, with 
their slaves, as many representatives as another of five thousand free 
voters. It enables Eastern Virginia, with a miserable numerical 
minority of voters, to control Western Virginia, with her large free 
voting population. 

"In addition to this, some of the States grant the privilege to a 
slaveholder of voting in every district in which he may own land. 
Some of the large proprietors, therefore, may have a dozen votes. In 
all of them it is difficidt for a non-slaveholder to obtain office, but in 
some he is made incompetent by the fundamental law. For instance, 
in South Carolina, he is excluded from the legislature by the Consti- 
tution. The qualification of a representative is made the ownership 
of such a large real estate, as makes necessary the ownership of slaves, 
or else, to use the language of that instrument, " of a settled freehold 
estate of five hundred acres of land and ten negroes." By this, it is 
made impossible for any other interest than that of the planters to be 
represented in the State Councils. The fabric of South Carolina 
aristocracy is, indeed, as compact and as well protected by law as the 
English nobility. . . . The unpalliated contradiction between our 
professions and practice is making us a hissing and a by- word through- 
out the civilized world ; the press is shackled, and freedom of speech 
trampled down ; friends of human liberty travel at the peril of their 
lives through fifteen States of the Union ; and every citizen holds his 
house and property at the will of a lawless and capricious mob, held in 
leash by the Slave Power. Our hearts bleed at the contemplation of this 
wide-spread ruin in our beloved land, and we have pledged ourselves 
and ours, on the altar of our country's honor, to the defeat of the Slave 
Power. We shall triumph. Truth and humanity are our allies. The 
voices of our dead fathers cheer us on. The blood they freely spilled 
for the rights of man, cries to us from the battle-stained fields it con- 
secrates, to be up and doing. The graves of those noble men, who 
perilled all for liberty, and blenched not in the hour that tried men's 
souls, stir us to emulate their energy. We shall prove that we 



282 TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES. 

inherit the spirit as well as the names of our ancestors; and moved 
by that spirit, we declare that the world shall not long hear the 
clanking of chains on the fields of our Revolutionary glory, or taunt 
the freemen of this Republic with a basely slavish submission to an 
idle and overbearing aristocracy." 



ALVAN STEWART. 

In his great argument before the Supreme Court of the 
State of New Jersey, in 1845, for the deliverance of four 
thousand persons from bondage, Mr. Stewart, whose speeches 
and writings, with biographical sketches, are, we are happy to 
learn, soon to be published under the editorship of Luther 
Rawson Marsh, of New York, says : 

" Slavery communicates all the afflictions of life to its victim with- 
out leaving scarce any of the pleasures ; it depresses the excellence of 
the slave's nature, by denying to the slave the ordinary means of 
improvement and elevation in the social scale of existence ; it brings 
forth the gross, malignant, cruel, mean, deceitful, and hypocritical 
portions of human nature, without a counterpoise or a power of sup- 
pression. The slave is always the natural and implacable enemy of 
the State ; he owes it nothing but deadly hate. . . . The slave 
has no country, no real home for which he will fight. Judge of the 
surprise of General Lafayette, when on the first day of being intro- 
duced to the American Congress in Philadelphia, in the summer of 
1777, he listened to the extraordinary request of South Carolina, to 
be released from raising and equipping the quota of troops designed 
by Congress to be raised by that State as her proportion in the event- 
ful struggle of the Revolution, on the ground if she spared that num- 
ber of troops from the State, it was feared that there might be a 
servile insurrection, that it was necessary the troops should remain 
at home to restrain a domestic enemy in her own bosom. If all the 
States had been under the weight of slavery like South Carolina, our 
independence would never have been achieved. Such States as South 
Carolina may bluster and threaten their brethren in time of peace 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 288 

with nullification and revolution, but when war comes, her power to 
act out of her own territory will be in the inverse ratio of the noise 
and threats she made in time of peace." 

WILLIAM HENRY FRY. 

Contrasting the system of white slavery which ruined Rome, 
with the system of black slavery that now threatens the com. 
plete disruption and ruin of our own country, Mr. Fry 

says : 

" Eome never attained to the solid power assumed for her. She 
was rotten to the core at the time of Marius and Scylla, and declined 
thereafter. She lived more and more on the labor of slaves. The 
food of her people became worse and worse. The standard of wages 
steadily declined. The quality of agriculture, under slave-labor, 
regularly withered up as Cincinnati ceased to guide their ploughs. 
The old comedies precisely represent the starvation of the slaves. 
Nero, who, just previous to his death, escaped from Rome and fled 
ten miles into the country, suffered desperate hunger before he could 
touch the black bread, the ordinary food of the slaves upon a so- 
considered magnificent patrician estate. The rabble of Rome were 
fed on corn gained by annexations in Sicily, Egypt, and the Archi- 
pelago. Some two hundred thousand ruffians of this kind, gloating 
over the death-struggles of gladiators in the huge murderings of the 
Coliseum — in ecstasies as the tragedies in that execrable arena grew 
thicker, with the map of hell on their faces, as they draggled in filth, 
gore, and beastliness, at the heels of some patrician Annexationist, 
rich with the plunder of foreign nations — these were fed out of the 
public purse, the pillaged granaries and general agonies of whole 
peoples. . . . Leaving aside the ordinary fables of divine origin, 
which are common to all nations, we find Rome, at the earliest 
dates, a nation divided into patricians and plebeians, bbth of the same 
color, and capable of equal effort in arts and arms, yet the one born 
to command and the other to obey. This fact, to any mind not ne- 
cessarily stolid or vicious, would alone shut out all these false refer- 
ences to Rome. But there are others which are equally pregnant 



284 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

with meaning to the classical student. Around and about Rome 

were nations enjoying what is even now considered n<> small degree 
of civilization. Among these stood Etrnria, whence Rome derived 
her softening arts, whose origin is lost in the mazes of antiquity, but 
whose skill in the pursuits of the beautiful has come down to us in 
forms which live even in our own day, and are household words. 
The Pontine Marshes and the circumjacent country, now dealing 
death in every breeze, were, at the time of early Roman history, 
occupied by forty towns and cities, flourishing and wealthy, accord- 
ing to the standards of those days. The conquest of these places by 
the Romans, and the centralizing ferocities of Marius and Scylla, and 
the whole imperial line, blotted them out from the face of the earth, 
and a materialized jererniade, a very stench of desolation, only re- 
mains to mark where once they stood. . . . The growth of 
Rome, which began by the assassination of every country near it, 
was continued by the same means. Eternally at war, eternally me- 
nacing the rest of the world, it was but one great camp. De Lolme 
characterizes Roman patriotism as the spirit of oppression and mur- 
der. Soon a Cincinnatus ceased to own a few acres, and, the fight 
ended, to return to the plough. The great patrician with sometimes 
four hundred slaves under his domestic roof; these four hundred, all 
white men above caricature in color, form, or brain, were crucified at 
one time for the single so-called crime of one of them. Such were 
the inevitable results of the Roman policy." 



RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 

In his speech at Concord, Massachusetts, Aug. 1, 1844, 
celebrating the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the 
West Indies, Mr. Emerson, the most practical and profound 
metaphysician in America, said : 

" The crude element of good in human affairs must work and ripen, 
spite of whips, and plantation laws, and West Indian interests. 
Conscience rolled on its pillow, and could not sleep. We sympathize 
very tenderly here with the poor aggrieved planter, of whom so 



TESTIMONY OF OTTK CONTEMPORARIES. 2S5 

many unpleasant things are said ; but if we saw the whip applied to 
old men, to tender women ; and, undeniably, though I shrink to say 
so — pregnant women set in the treadmill for refusing to work, when, 
not they, but the eternal law of animal nature refused to work ; if we 
saw men's backs flayed with cowhides, and ' hot rum poured on, 
superinduced with brine or pickle, rubbed in with a cornhusk, in the 
scorching heat of the sun;' — if we saw the runaways hunted with 
bloodhounds into swamps and hills ; and, in cases of passion, a 
planter throwing his negro into a copper of boiling cane juice — if 
we saw these things with eyes, we too should wince. They are not 
pleasant sights. The blood is moral, the blood is anti-slavery, it 
runs cold in the veins : the stomach rises with disgust, and curses 

slavery 

" Unhappily, most unhappily, gentlemen, man is born with intel- 
lect, as well as with a love of sugar, and with a sense of justice, as 
well as a taste for strong drink. These ripened, as well as those. 
You could not educate him, you could not get any poetry, any wis- 
dom, any beauty in woman, any strong and commanding character 
in man, but these absurdities would still come flashing out — these 
absurdities of a demand for justice, a generosity for the weak and 
oppressed. Unhappily, too, for the planter, the laws of nature are 
in harmony with each other : that which the head and the heart 
demand, is found to be, in the long run, for what the grossest calcu- 
lator calls his advantage. The moral sense is always supported by 
the permanent interest of the parties. Else, I know not how, in our 
world, any good would ever get done. It was shown to the planters 
that they, as well as the negroes, were slaves ; that though they paid 
no wages, they got very poor work ; that their estates were ruining 
them under the finest climate ; and that they needed the severest 
monopoly laws at home to keep them from bankruptcy. The op- 
. pression of the slave recoiled on them. They were full of vices ; 
their children were lumps of pride, sloth, sensuality and rottenness. 
The position of woman was nearly as bad as it could be, and like 
other robbers, they could not sleep in security. Many planters have 
said, since the emancipation, that, before that day, they were the 
greatest slaves on the estate. Slavery is no scholar, no improver ; 
it does not love the newspaper, the mail bag, a college, a book or a 



286 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

preacher, who has the absurd whim of* Baying what lie thinks; it 
does not increase the white population ; it does not improve the 
soil ; everything goes to decay." 



THOMAS CORWIN. 

In his speech against the Comjiromiso Bill, delivered in 
the United States Senate, July 24, 1848, Mr. Corwin, once 
a Kentucky boy, now an Ohio man, said : 

"I am the more confirmed in the course which I am determined 
to pursue, by some historical facts elicited in this very discussion. I 
remember what was said by the senator from Virginia the other 
day. It is a truth, that when the Constitution of the United States 
was made, South Carolina and Georgia refused to come into the 
Union unless the slave trade should be continued for twenty years ; 
and the North agreed that they would vote to continue the slave 
trade for twenty years ; yes, voted that this new Republic should 
engage in piracy and murder at the will of two States ! So the his- 
tory reads ; and the condition of the agreement was, that those two 
States should agree to some arrangement about navigation laws ! I 
do not blame South Carolina and Georgia for this transaction any 
more than I do those Northern States who shared in it. But sup- 
pose the question were now presented here by any one. whether we 
should adopt the foreign slave trade and continue it for twenty years, 
would not the whole land turn pale with horror, that in the middle 
of the nineteenth century, a citizen of a free community, a senator 
of the United States, should dare to propose the adoption of a sj stem 
that has been denominated piracy and murder, and is, by law, pun- 
ished by death all over Christendon? What did they do then? They 
had the power to prohibit it ; but, at the command of these two 
States, they allowed that to be introduced into the Constitution, to 
which much of slavery now existing in our land is clearly to be 
traced. For who can doubt that, but for that woeful bargain, 
slavery would by this time have disappeared from all the States then 
in the Union, with one or two exceptions? The number of slaves 



% 

TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 287 

in the United States at this period was about six hundred thousand ; 
it is now three millions. And just as you extend the area of slavery, 
so you multiply the difficulties which lie in the way of its extermi- 
nation. It had been infinitely better that day that South Carolina 
and Georgia had remained out of the Union for a while, rather than 
that the Constitution should have been made to sanction the slave 
trade for twenty years. The xlissolution of the old Confederation 
would have been nothing in comparison with that recognition of 
piracy and murder. I can conceive of nothing in the dark record of 
man's enormities, from the death of Abel down to this hour, so hor- 
rible as that of stealing people from their own home, and making 
them and their posterity slaves forever. It is a crime which we 
know has been visited with such signal punishment in the history 
of nations as to warrant the belief that heaven itself had interfered 
to avenge the wrongs of earth." 



B. GRATZ BROWN. 

In the Missouri legislature, in January, 1857, Mr. Brown, 
of St. Louis, proved himself a hero, a patriot and a statesman, 
in the following words: 

"lam a Free-Soiler, and I don't deny it. No word or vote of 
mine shall ever inure to the benefit of such a monstrous doctrine as 
the extension of slavery over the patrimony of the free white labor- 
ers of the country. I am for the greatest good of the greatest num- 
ber, and against the system which monopolizes the free and fertile 
territory of our country for a few slaveholders, to the exclusion of 
thousands upon thousands of the sinewy sons of toil. The time will 
come, and perhaps very soon, when the people will ride for their 
own benefit, and not for that of a class which, numerically speaking, 
is insignificant. I stand here in the midst of the assembled legisla- 
ture of Missouri to avow myself a Free-Soiler. Let those who are 
scared at names shrink from the position if they will. I shall take 
my stand in favor of the white man. Here, in Missouri, I shall sup- 
port the rights, the dignity and the welfare of the eight hundred thou- 



J 

288 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

sand non-slaveholders in preference to upholding and perpetuating 
the dominancy of the thirty thousand slaveholders who inhabit our 
State." 

HENRY C. CAREY. 

In his statesman-like Letters to the President, which Mr. 
Buchanan, to whom they are most respectfully addressed, 
has not answered, for the reason, we suppose, that it is abso- 
lutely impossible for him to answer them with any credit to 
himself or to his party, Mr. Carey says, assuring us that ten 
years ago conservative, patriotic men everywhere, would have 
regarded as a false prophet the man who had predicted : 

" That, at the close of a single decade, the regular expenditures of 
the Federal Government, in a time of peace, would reach seventy mil- 
lions of dollars — being five times more than they had been but thirty 
years before. 

"That the Executive would dictate to members of Congress what 
should be their course, and publicly advertise the offices that were 
to be given, to those whose votes should be in accordance with his 
desires. 

"That the growing mental slavery thus indicated, would be at- 
tended by corresponding growth in the belief, that ' one of the chief 
bulwarks of our institutions was to be found in the physical enslave- 
ment of the laborer. 1 

" That the extension of the area of human slavery would have be- 
come the primary object of the government, and that, with that view, 
the great Ordinance of 1787, as carried out in the Missouri Compro- 
mise, would, be repealed. 

" That the reopening of the slave trade would be publicly advo- 
cated, and that the first step toward its accomplishment would lie 
taken by a citizen of the United States — in rescinding all the prohi- 
bitions of the Central American Governments. 

" That the prohibition of slavery in a Central American State would 
be considered sufficient reasons for the rejection of a treaty. 



TESTIMONY OF OUE CONTEMPORARIES. 289 

" That the substitution, throughout all the minor employments of 
society, of slave labor for that of the freeman, would be publicly re- 
commended by the Executive of a leading State. 

" That, while always seeking territory in the South, the rights and 
interests of the people would be bartered away, for the sole and ex- 
clusive purpose of preventing annexation in the Forth. 

" That Lynch-law would have found its way into the Senate cham- 
ber : that it would have superseded the provisions of the Constitution 
throughout the Southern States : that it would have superseded the 
civil authority in one of the States of the Union : that the right of 
the States to prohibit slavery within their limits, would be so se- 
riously questioned as to warrant the belief that the day was near at 
hand when it would be totally denied : that all the decisions of the 
Supreme Court for sixty years, favorable to freedom, would by this 
time have been reversed : that the doctrine of constructive treason 
would be adopted in federal courts : and that the rights of the citizen 
would be thus in equal peril, from the extension of legal authority 
on one hand, and the substitution of the law of force on the other. 

" That polygamy and slavery would go hand in hand with each 
other, and that the doctrine of a plurality of wives would be publicly 
proclaimed by men holding highly important offices under the Fede- 
ral Government." 

WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

In his speech at the City Hall, in Worcester, Mass., Jan. 
15, 1857, Mr. Phillips, the Demosthenes of New England, 
whom certain Pro-Slavery fanatics of the South, in an insane 
effort to abuse, have highly complimented by describing him 
as " an infernal machine set to music," said : 

" Slavery is so momentous an evil, that in its presence all others 
pale away. No thoughtful man can de&ni any sacrifice too great to 
secure its abolition. The safety of the people is the highest law. 
In this battle wo demand a clear field and the use of every honorable 
weapon. Even the monuments of our fathers are no longer sacred, 
if the enemy are concealed behind them. 
13 



290 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

" This is my first claim upon every man -who has an Anti-slavery 
purpose. One of the greatest, if not the greatest question of the age, 
is that of Free Lahor. I do not know — no man can prophecy — what 
sacrifices it -will demand, no human sagacity divine -what shape it 
will acquire in the kaleidoscope of the future. Nobody can foresee 
the comhinations that will he necessary in order to secure liberty 
and turn law into justice. The pledge we make to each other, as 
Abolitionists, is, that to this slave question, embodying as it does the 
highest justice and the most perfect liberty, synonymous as it is with 
right, manhood, justice, with pure religion, a free press, an impartial 
judiciary and a true civilization, we will sacrifice everything. If any 
man dissents, he is not, in any just sense, an Abolitionist. If he has 
not studied the question enough to know that it binds up in itself 
all considerations of government, then he is not worthy of being 
called an Abolitionist." 

Again, on the 17th of February, 1859, addressing a Com- 
mittee of the Massachusetts legislature, in support of nume- 
rous petitions, asking for a law to prevent the recapture of 
fugitive slaves, he said : 

" It is no answer to my request to say, that you will grant a jury 
trial — that you will hedge the citizen with such safeguards that none 
but a real fugitive can ever be delivered up. That is not the Massa- 
chusetts we want, and not the Massachusetts we have a right to 
claim. If the South has violated the Constitution repeatedly, pal- 
pably, avowedly, defiantly, atrociously, for her own purposes — to get 
power in the government, to perpetuate her system, to control the 
nation — we claim of you that you should exercise the privilege which 
that violation has given you. We claim of you that you should give 
us a Massachusetts worthy of its ancient name. Give us a State that 
is not disgraced by the trial, in the nineteenth century, in the midst 
of so-called Christian churches, of the issue, 'Is this man a chattel?' 
"We will not rest until it is decided as the law of Massachusetts, that 
a human being, immortal, created by the hand of God, shall not be 
put upon trial in the Commonwealth, and required to prove that he 
is not property. It shall not be competent for the courts of Massa- 



TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES. 291 

chusetts to insult the civilization of the nineteenth century by asking 
that question, or making it the subject of evidence and proof." 

THEODORE PARKER. 

In Lis discourse at the Music Hall, in Boston, on Monday, 
February 12, 1S54, Mr. Parker, who, bountifully supplied 
with brain, was born thinking, and whose abhorrence of 
slavery of the body is more than equalled by his abhorrence 
of slavery of the mind, said : 

" Slavery hinders the education and the industry of the people ; it 
is fatal to their piety. Think of a religious kidnapper ! a Christian 
slave-breeder ! a slave trader loving his neighbor as himself, receiv- 
ing the ' sacraments' in some Protestant Church from the hand of a 
Christian apostle, then the next day selling babies by the dozen, and 
tearing young women from the arms of their husbands, to feed the 
lust of lecherous New Orleans! Imagine a religious man selling his 
own children into eternal bondage ! Think of a Christian defending 
shivery out of the Bible and declaring there is no higher law, but 

Atheism is the first principle of Republican government 

As soon as the North awakes to its ideas, and uses its vast strength 
of money, its vast strength of numbers, and its still more gigantiQ 
strength of educated intellect, we shall tread this monster underneath 
our feet. See how Spain has fallen — how poor and miserable is 
Spanish America. She stands there a perpetual warning to us. One 
day the North will rise in her majesty, and put Slavery under our 
feet, and then we shall extend the area of Freedom. The blessing of 
Almighty God will come down upon the noblest people the world 
ever saw — who have triumphed over Theocracy, Monarchy, Aris- 
tocracy, Despotocracy, and have got a Democracy — a government 
of all, for all, and by all — a church without a bishop, a state without 
a king, a community without a lord, and a family without a slave." 

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

In a recently published volume of his writings and speeches, 



292 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

Mr. Garrison, under whose most able counsel and convincing 
arguments organized opposition to slavery first became an 
important, and is destined soon to become a controlling, 
power in the government, says : 

"It is the strength and glory of the Anti-Slavery cause, that its 
principles are so simple and elementary, and yet so vital to freedom, 
morality and religion, as to commend themselves to the understand- 
ings and consciences of men of every sect and party, every creed and 
persuasion, every caste and color. They are self-evident truths — 
fixed stars in the moral firmament — hlazingsuns in the great universe 
of mind, dispensing light and heat over the whole surface of human- 
ity, and around which all social and moral affinities revolve in har- 
mony. They are to he denied, only as the existence of a God, or the 
immortality of the soul, is denied. Unlike human theories, they can 
never lead astray ; unlike human devices, they can never he made 

subservient to ambition or selfishness I will say, 

finally, that I tremble for the Republic while slavery exists therein. 
If I look up to God for success, no smile of mercy or forgiveness 
dispels the gloom of futurity; if to our resources, they are daily 
diminishing; if to all history, our destruction is not only possible, 
but almost curtain. Why should we slumber at this momentous 
■ crisis? If our hearts were dead to every throb of humanity; if it 
were lawful to oppress, where power is ample; still, if we had any 
regard for our safety and happiness, we should strive to crush the 
vampire which is feeding upon our life blood. All the selfishness of 
our nature cries aloud for a better security. Our own vices are too 
strong for us, and keep us in perpetual alarm; how, in addition to 
these, shall we be able to contend successfully with millions of armed 
and desperate men, as we must eventually, if slavery do not cease?" 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

In his address before the American Tract Society of Bos- 
ton, in theChurch of the Puritans, New York, May 12, 1859, 
Mr. Beecher said : 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 293 

" For more than thirty years the diapason of this country has not 
been the swell of the ocean. It has not been the sighing of the wind 
through our -Western forests; the deep thunder-toned diapason that 
has rolled through this land, has been the sighing of the slave. 
Throughout all this time the Church has heard the voice, and 
scarcely knew what it was. But God has been rolling upon her 
more and more. In my day a conflict has taken place. I remember 
the days of mobs. I remember when Birney's press was broken in 
pieces at Cincinnati and dragged into the Ohio River. I remember 
when Theodore Weld was driven by unvitalized eggs from place to 
place in the West. I remember the day when storehouses were 
sacked and houses pillaged in New York. I remember the day when 
a venerable man escaped from being murdered for a good cause, and 
because he escaped has never been engaged in it since. I remember 
when it was as much as a man's name was worth to be called an 
Abolitionist. I have within twenty years seen those parties which 
were the most tyrannic ground out of existence, and those churches 
which refused to discuss this question have been overrun by it and 
taken complete possession of. Synods, which have acted as dykes, 
have been overwhelmed and submerged. General Assemblies have 
been carried away captive by this good cause, and the public senti- 
ment of the whole continent has been changed in this mighty work." 



GEORGE E. CIIEEVER. 

In an address delivered in the Church of the Puritans, on 
Thursday, May 13, 1858, Dr. Cheever, speaking of the sin of 
slavery, said : 

" We practise the iniquity upon children, innocent children, the 
natives of our own land, unbought, unsold, unpaid for, without con- 
sultation or consent of father or mother, or the shadow of a permis- 
sion from the Almighty ; and they, the new-born babes of this sys- 
tem, are the compound interest year by year added to the sin and its 
capital, which thus doubles upon us in the next generation, and 
must treble in another. We make use of the most sacred domestic 



294: TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

affections, of maternal, filial, and I was going to say, connubial love 
— but the system forbids, and I have to say contubernal — for such 
rapid and accumulating production of the inquity, as shall be in 
some measure adequate to the demand. The whole family relation, 
the whole domestic state, is prostituted, poisoned, turned into a 
misery-making machine for the agent of all evil. What God meant 
should be the source and inspiration of happiness, becomes the foun- 
tain of sin and woe. The sacred names of husband, wife, father, 
mother, son, babe, become the exponents of various forces and values 
in the slave-breeding institute. And the whole perfection, com- 
pleteness and concentration of this creative power in this manufac- 
turing interest descends like a trip-hammer on the children, beating 
them from birth into marketable articles, and stamping and sealing 
them as chattels, foredoomed and fatalized to run till they wear out, 
as living spindles, wheels, activities of labor and productiveness, in 
the same horrible system. 

"And each generation of immortal marketable stuff is as exactly 
fashioned in these grooves, molds, channels, wefted, netted, and 
drawn through, to come out the invariable product, as the yards of 
carpeting are cut from the loom to be trodden on, or as the coins 
drop from the die for the circulation of society. This is the peculi- 
arity of the sin of slavery in the foremost Christian country on the 
face of the earth. In this branch of native industry and manufacture 
we are self-reliant. Disavowing a protective policy in almost every- 
thing else, we are proudly patriotic for the security, superiority and 
abundance of this most sacred native product of domestic manufac- 
ture, and for neither the raw material nor the bleaching of it will 
depend on any other country in the world." 

JOSEPH P. THOMPSON. 

Trying the Fugitive Slave Law "by the Old and New 
Testaments, Dr. Thompson, pastor of the Broadway Taber- 
nacle, says : 

" "Whatever may be thought of the lawfulness or the expediency of 
introducing the general subject of slavery into the pulpit, there can- 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 295 

be no question that the treatment due to fugitives from slavery is a 
legitimate topic for discussion there. That is a subject of which the 
Bible treats, and in making it a subject of discourse I am not preach- 
ing politics but am preaching the Gospel ; applying the principles of 
the Bible to an important public interest. The subject legitimately 
belongs to the pulpit, and politicians should be careful how they tam- 
per with it, lest they betray an ignorance of the principles of Biblical 
interpretation and of the spirit of Christianity, as gross as that igno- 
rance of political affairs which they are prone to charge upon minis- 
ters of the Gospel. The treatment of fugitive slaves has indeed been 
made a political question ; but it was a Biblical question and a ques- 
tion of morality long before it was dragged into the arena of politics, 
and it was legislated upon by the King of heaven and earth ages 
before the Congress of the United States had an existence. . . . 
The laws of Moses were given in the wilderness, to a people just 
escaped from bondage, and who, therefore, had no slaves ; they were 
given in anticipation of the introduction of slavery among that peo- 
ple when they should come to be settled as conquerors in Canaan ; 
they were given to restrain the lust of conquest and oppression, and 
to hedge in as much as possible the natural tendency of the emanci- 
pated to retaliate upon others the cruelties of their own bondage — to 
prevent the Israelites from becoming to each other and to the Canaan- 
ites what the Egyptians had been to the Israelites ; they were given in 
order, by a qualified and onerous permission, to secure the overthrow 
of a system which, as the times and the people were, could not have 
been shut out by an absolute prohibition. And as the crowning act 
of legislation for the ultimate overthrow of an evil tolerated from 
necessity, it was decreed that no fugitive from slavery should ever be 
delivered up to his master. The slave was at liberty to escape from 
his master whenever he desired to better his condition, and in what- 
ever part of Israel he should choose an asylum, there was he to be 
allowed to remain without molestation." 



E. H. CHAPIN. 

From two of Mr. Chapin's published works, one entitled 



296 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

" True Manliness," the other " City Life," we make the fol- 
lowing extracts : 

"I pass into the anti-slavery meeting. Here, I discover, is agitated 
a great truth — the natural equality of all men — the right of the 
poorest and the lowest to he free, to breathe God's air upon what 
liill-top lie will, to follow his sunshine around the earth if he list — 
the wrong of holding him in bondage, of putting him by force to do 

another's work Intemperance, slavery, war, what are 

these but the flowering plants of interior sin ? .... Activity 
and intelligence indicate a condition of material and individual free- 
dom. A community which really thrives in all the departments of 
industry, must be, essentially, a free community. Despotism pre- 
vails more where men do not feel that they have much at stake in 
the country, and where their faculties have not been aroused. But 
the toil of enterprise and the sense of possession, develop a conscious- 
ness of personality which resists encroachment and chafes under 
oppression." 

HENRY W. BELLOWS. 

Writing to his friend, the Rev. Thos. "W. Higginson, under 
date of Jan. 6, 1857, Dr. Bellows says : 

"The last election has shown that the North is waking up in con- 
science, courage, and sensibility to her duty, not to herself alone but 
to the Nation, the Union, and Humanity. The astonishing effect of 
the free press in arousing the people, indicates what will be the tri- 
umph of another election. The South sees for the first time that the 
North is in earnest, feels its power, and is determined to exercise it. 
And this is having an admirable effect upon the discussion of the 
subject. "What I desire now and always to maintain is this: That 
our conscientious opposition to the extension of shivery is not to bo 
abated or colored by fears for the Union; and that, so far as it de- 
pi mis on the North, we are to stop its extension, let the consequences 
to the Union — to the North, or the South — be what they will. This 
ground I believe to be the safe ground — the Christian, humane, 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 297 

patriotic, constitutional, unsectional, Union-saving ground. I take 
it as a lover of the North and a lover of the South ; as a believer in 
the future of the United States. I take it as a hater of slavery, an 
undying foe to its extension, and a laborer for its overthrow and 
extinction in the speediest manner and time consistent with our 
whole duty as American citizens." 

LEWIS TAPPAN. 

In his thirteenth annual Report to the American and 
Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Tappan says : 

" Nature cries aloud against the inhumanities of slavery ; Free 
Democracy abjures the hateful system ; and Free Christianity recoils 
from its leprous touch. That it should exist, extend and nourish in 
a nation planted by the excellent of the earth, and in opposition to 
the principles of Eepublicanism and Christianity, excites the marvel 
and arouses the grief and indignation of good men throughout the 

world American slavery is at war with the Declaration 

of Independence, the Constitution of the United Stales, natural jus- 
tice, and Christianity. Agitation on the subject will not, therefore, 
cease while free discussion is allowed, and while a free press exists, 
while Protestantism and Free Democracy are prized, while love to 
God and man prevail, until the curse is removed from the Church and 
Government of this country, and all its citizens are equal before the 
law It is obvious to every intelligent and candid looker- 
on, that the anti-slavery cause, in spite of the sneers of opponents, 
the denunciations of men in power, and the designs of the crafty, is 
steadily pursuing its march to a glorious consummation." 

JOSHUA LEAVITT. 

In the course of an elaborate article on national politics, 
Dr. Leavitt, one of the able editors of the " Independent," a 
New York weekly religious newspaper, says : 

" The ascendency of the slave power in the councils of the nation, 

13* 



298 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

obtained through the ill-advised concessions of the federal Constitu- 
tion, and strengthened by a long series of usurpations on the one 
hand and of surrenders on the other, is unjust, dangerous to the Union, 
and incompatible with the preservation of free government; and is 
the principal cause of the political and financial evils under which 
we groan ; and thus the only hope of relief is in a united determina- 
tion of the friends of freedom, to employ all wise and lawful means 
for the extinction of slavery itself." 

WILLIAM GOODELL. 

In his careful and comprehensive " View of the Slavery 
Question," Mr. Goodell says : 

" The inherent criminality of slavery and of slaveholding, their utter 
repugnance to natural justice, to Christianity, to the law of nature, 
to the law of God, to the principles of Democracy, to the liberties of 
the country — no longer present questions for serious discussion among 
the great body of intelligent citizens in the non-slaveholding States. 
Here and there a superannuated ecclesiastic (who has, perhaps, a son 
at the South, or in a college seeking Southern patronage), may thumb 
over his Polyglot, and pretend to find a justification of slavery. But 
nobody believes him. LTis disclaimers and self-contradictions prove 
that he does not, even in his dotage, believe it himself. .... 
Under the good providence of God, the dissensions among Abolition- 
ists, however humiliating to them, and however mischievous in some 
respects, have been over-ruled in other respects for good. Aboli- 
tionism, before the division, was a powerful elixir, in the vial of one 
anti-slavery organization, corked up tight, and carried about for 
exhibition. By the division, the vial was broken, and the contents 
spilled over the whole surface of society, where it has been working 
as a leaven ever since, till the mass is beginning to upheave." 

SAMUEL J. MAY. 

In his speech at Syracuse, New York, Oct. 14, 1851, Mr. 
May said : 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 299 

" To urge that our Eepublic cannot be maintained, but upon prin- 
ciples diametrically opposite to those upon which it was so solemnly 
based, is as much as to proclaim to the world that our Declaration 
of Independence is found to be untrue ; and thus rejoice the hearts 
of tyrants throughout the world, and cast down forever the hopes of 

the oppressed everywhere Never have the principles on 

which the civil institutions of our country were founded been put to 
so severe a test as at this day. The encroachments of a despotic 
power of a slaveholding oligarchy upon that liberty which our 
fathers thought they had bequeathed us, have been made to such an 
extent, that the champions of that oligarchy have, on the floor of our 
national Congress, pronounced the glorious declaration of '76, that 
all men have an inalienable right to liberty — a mere rhetorical flou- 
rish — and have dared to intimate that the poor and laboring people 
of the Northern States, ought not to be allowed to exercise the pre- 
rogatives of freemen, any more than the Southern slaves. And by 
the machinery of party ism, the leaders of the Northern wings of the 
two political hosts, have been brought to acquiesce in the supremacy 
of the slaveholding power in our country, and to ui»:te in requiring 
of ns all, implicit obedience to its demands, though they violate, 
utterly, our highest sense of right, and outrage every feeling of hu- 
manity." 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

In his paper of Oct. 21th, 1858, Mr. Bryant, the venerable 
bard and unbending patriot, who has so long and so ably- 
presided over the editorial columns of the New York " Even- 
ing Post," says : 

"By instigations to violence and threats of mob-law, the free 
expression of opinion in regard to slavery is put down in the Southern 
States. Freedom of speech iu a community seems to depend on 
the recognition of personal freedom in all classes. Wherever slavery 
is introduced, a despotic oligarchy is created, which allows of no 

more liberty of speech than is permitted in Austria 

The slaveholding aristocracy is the most cowardly of all aristocracies. 



300 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

It lives in constant fear of overthrow ; it knows that it has a bad 
name ; that the opinion of the world is against it, and as those are 
apt to do who are conscious of standing in general discredit, it puts 
on a bold face and plays the bully where it has the opportunity, and 
the ruffian where it has the power." 



HORACE GREELEY. 

For the purpose of showing that Mr. Greeley is not, as he 
is generally represented by the oligarchy, an inveterate hater 
of the South, we introduce the following extracts from one 
of his editorial articles in a late number of the New York 
" Tribune" — a most faithfid and efficient advocate of Free 
Labor, the circulation of which we are happy to be able to 
state, is greater than the aggregate circulation of a score or 
more of the principal pro-slavery sheets published south of 
the Potomac. 

"Is it in vain that we pile fact upon fact, proof on proof, showing 
that slavery is a blight and a curse to the States which cherish it ? 
These facts are multitudinous as the leaves of the forest ; conclusive 
as the demonstrations of geometry. Nobody attempts to refute 
them, but the champions of slavery extension seem determined to 
persist in ignoring them. Let it be understood, then, once for all, 
that we do not hate the South, war on the South, nor seek to ruin 
the South, in resisting the extension of slavery. We most earnestly 
believe human bondage a curse to the South, and to all whom it 
affects; but we do not labor for its overthrow otherwise than 
through the conviction of the South of its injustice and mischief. 
Its extension into new territories we determinedly resist, not by any 
means from ill will to the South, but under the impulse of good will 
to all mankind. 

"Whenever we draw a parallel between Northern and Southern 
production, industry, thrift, wealth, the few who seek to parry the 
facts at all complain that the instances are unfairly selected — that 
the commercial ascendency of the North, with the profits and facili- 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 301 

ties thence accruing, accounts for the striking preponderance of the 
North. In vain we insist that slavery is the cause of this very com- 
mercial ascendency — that Norfolk and Eichmond and Charleston 
might have been to this country what Boston, New York and Phila- 
delphia now are, had not slavery spread its pall over and paralyzed 
the energies of the South." 



HENRY J. RAYMOND. 

In his paper of Sept. 3, 1856, Mr. Raymond, the enterpris- 
ing and accomplished editor of the New York " Daily Times ," 
says : 

" Here at the North everything is so free — men think and speak, 
and write and print, and teach so freely what they believe to be 
true, that it is hard to realize the actual tyranny which slavery has 
established over our Southern brethren. How thoroughly it rules 
all political action, we know from incidents of daily occurrence. 
But without careful study we cannot credit the absolutism of its 
sway over literature, the education, the social life, the religion even, 
of the Southern States. No man there dares to write, or print, or 
speak a word in reprobation of slavery. The editor in his chair, the 
writer at his desk, the clergyman in his pulpit, receive their orders 
from slavery, and must do its bidding. Whatever logic and reason 
may say, whatever lessons history may teach, whatever the princi- 
ples of Christian brotherhood may requfre, all must be subordinate 
and secondary to the higher law of slavery." 



THUBLOW WEED. 

In his paper of Dec. 8, 1858, Mr. "Weed, who, with rare 
ability and success, has long conducted the Albany " Even- 
ing Journal," says : 

" It has always been the practice of doughface politicians to argue 
as if the prosperitv of the North depended upon the degradation of 

* 



302 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

the South, and to urge ns to connive at the spread of slavery in 
order to drive a profitable trade with it. These arguments are as 
onphilosophical as they are unmanly. The States are so linked by 
commerce that whatever benefits one, benefits all, and whatever 
clogs the energies of one is a drag upon the i>rosperity of the united 
whole. The trade between the North and South is brisk, but it 
would be threefold as great, had no slave ever been imported from 
the Guinea Coast, and if each section now had the products of its 
own intelligent labor to exchange for those of the other. Let the 
New England or New York merchant or mechanic, who has been 
deceived by this doughface plea, ask himself whether his branch of 
business is the better or the worse for having in the Union such 
young, vigorous and Free States as Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, 
Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and whether it would be worse or 
better for him, if they had come in slaveholding communities like 
Arkansas, Texas and Florida ?" 



J. "WATSON WEBB. 

In his paper of Oct. 1, 1850, Gen. Webb, the veteran 
editor of the New York " Courier and Enquirer," says : 

" It is idle, it is worse than idle, for Southern men or for ourselves, 
to blind the eyes to the fact that it is the sense of the civilized world 
that African slavery is a dishonor and a reproach to the American 
Republic. The fact that the principal nations of Europe have abol- 
ished it at a sacrifice, and set it down in the catalogue of crimes, is, 
in itself, irrefragable proof of the fact. And this sense weighs most 
heavily upon those Europeans who have the most adequate appreci- 
ation of the grandeur of our Republic, and the glorious principles 
upon which it is framed. The venerable Humboldt speaks as the 
representative of all that is most liberal and enlightened in the mind 
of Europe, when he says : 

" ' But there is one thing, sir, which grieves me more than I can describe, and 

that is the policy you have lately adopted in regard to slavery. I am not so 

ile as to expect that yon should instantly emancipate your slaves. I 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 303 

know well the formidable difficulties that you have to contend with in solving 
the problem of slavery. But what occasions deep sorrow and pain, believe 
me, to all lovers of your great country, is to find that, instead of adopting any 
means, however slow and gradual, to relieve yourselves of it, you are con- 
stantly trying to extend and consolidate a system which is not only opposed to 
all the principles of morality, but, as it appears to me, is pregnant with appall- 
iug and inevitable dangers to the future of the Republic itself. Tell your 
countrymen this from me.' 

" Every man in the civilized world, who has a life to live in this 
nineteenth century, has an interest in this struggle. Whether they 
are on the immediate field or not, they all must, more or less, par- 
ticipate in its fortunes. Human hearts have their affinities and 
mutual influences, which distance cannot dissipate, or difference in 
outward circumstances neutralize. Ideas, too, in these times, are 
winged ; and whether good or evil, they find, fly where they may, 
principles and aims german to, if not identical with, those they serve 
in the land of their origin, or at least the conditions out of which 
such principles and aims may spring. They are as sure everywhere 
of the same human nature as of the same ambient atmosphere. 



GAMALIEL BAILEY. 

As editor and proprietor of the " National Era," the late 
Dr. Bailey, of Washington City, whose very able and con- 
sistent management of the paper won for him the high regard 
of every true lover of liberty, said : 

" The tendency of slavery to diffuse itself, and to crowd out free 
labor, was early observed by American patriots, North and South ; 
and Mr. Jefferson, the- great apostle of Eepublicanism, made an 
effort in 1784 to cut short the encroaching tide of barbaric despotism, 
by prohibiting slavery in all the Territories of the Union, down to 
thirty-one degrees of latitude, which was then our Southern boun- 
dary. His beneficent purpose failed, not for want of a decisive ma- 
jority of votes present in the Congress of the Confederation, but in 
consequence of the absence of the delegates from one or two States, 
which were necessary to the constitutional majority. When the 



304 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

subject again caine up, in 1787, Mr. Jefferson was minister to France, 
and the famous ordinance of that year was adopted, prohibiting 
slavery North and West of the Ohio Eiver. Between 1784 and 
1787, the strides of slavery westward into Tennessee and Kentucky, 
had become too considerable to admit of the policy of exclusion ; 
and besides those regions were then integral parts of Virginia and 
ISTorth Carolina, and of course they could not be touched without the 
consent of those States. In 1820, another effort was made to arrest 
the progress of slavery, which threatened to monopolize the whole 
territory west of the Mississippi. In the meantime the South had 
apostatized from the faith of Jefferson. It had ceased to love univer- 
sal liberty, and the growing importance of the cotton culture had 
caused the people to look with indifference upon the moral deformity 
of slavery; and, as a matter of course, the politicians became its 
apologists and defenders. After a severe struggle a compromise was 
agreed upon, by which Missouri was to be admitted with slavery, 
which was the immediate point in controversy ; and slavery was to 
be excluded from all the territory north and west of that State. 

"We have shown, from the most incontestable evidence, tbat 
there is in slave society a much greater tendency to diffuse itself 
into new regions, than belongs to freedom, for the reason that it has 
no internal vitality. It cannot live if circumscribed, and must, like 
a consumptive, be continually roving for a change of air to recupe- 
rate its wasting energies." 

LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 

As long ago as 1836, Mrs. Child, always an able and 
earnest pleader for truth and justice (certainly not less so 
now than then, as is fully evinced in heT recent correspond- 
ence with Gov. Wise and Mrs. Mason, of Virginia), said: 

"The beginning of slavery is the triumph of power over weak- 
ness; its continuance is the tyranny of knowledge over ignorance. 
. . . In a community where all the labor is done by one class, 
there must, of course, be another class who live in indolence ; and 
we all know how much people who have nothing to do are tempted 



TESTIMONY OF OTJR CON TEMTOR \ TIES. 305 

by what the world calls pleasures ; the result is, that all slaveholding 
States and Colonies are proverbial for dissipation. Hence, too, the 
contempt for industry which prevails in such a state of society. 
Where none work but slaves, usefulness becomes degradation. . . . 
Those who take from laborers the natural and healthy stimulus of 
Avagcs, and try to supply its place by the coercive power of a driver 
and whip, pursue a course as irrational and impolitic as a man would 
who took the main-spring from his watch, and hired a boy to turn 
the hands round. . . . The difficulty of subduing slavery, on 
account of the great number of interests which become united in it, 
and the prodigious strength of the selfish passions enlisted in its 
support, is by no means its least alarming feature. This Hydra has 
ten thousand heads, every one of which will bite or growl, when the 
broad daylight of truth lays open the secrets of its hideous den." 

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 

In her " Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," Mrs. Stowe, whose 
name is everywhere wreathed and immortalized on the scrolls 
of liberty, says : 

" Slavery is a simple retrogression of society to the worst abuses 
of the middle ages. We must not, therefore, be surprised to find the 
opinions and practices of the middle ages, as to civil and religious 

toleration, prevailing It is no child's play to attack an 

institution which has absorbed into itself so much of the political 
power and wealth of this nation. The very heart shrinks to think 
what the faithful Christian must endure who assails this institution 
on its own ground ; but it must be done. How was it at the North ? 
There was a universal effort to put down the discussion of it here by 
mob-law. Printing-presses were broken, houses torn down, property 
destroyed. Bra-ve men, however, stood firm ; martyr blood was 
shed for the right of free opinion in speech ; and so the right of dis- 
cussion was established. Nobody tries that sort of argument now — 
its day is past. In Kentucky, also, they tried to stop the discussion 
by similar means. Mob violence destroyed a printing press, and 
threatened the lives of individuals. But there were brave men 



306 TESTIMONY OF ODE CONTEMPORARIES. 

there, who feared not violence or threats of death ; and emancipation 
is now open for discussion in Kentucky. The fact is the South must 
discuss the matter of slavery. She cannot shut it out, unless she 
lays an embargo on the literature of the whole civilized world; if it 
be, indeed, divine and God-appointed, why does she so tremble to 
have it touched ? If it bo of God, all the free inquiry in the world 
cannot overthrow it. Discussion must and will come. It only 
requires courageous men to lead the way." 

MATTIE GRIFFITH. 

In her very able and interesting " Autobiography of a 
Female Slave," a work of fiction, which is fuller of fact than 
any book of the kind that we have ever read — a work which, 
for v^vid, accurate delineation of indoor life in the South, and 
for terse, graphic portrayal of slaveholding manners and 
morals, has no equal — Miss Griffith, one of Kentucky's truest 
and noblest daughters, who, by the emancipation of her own 
slaves, has set a lofty example of pure patriotism and bene- 
volence, says, writing pointedly to the people of her native 
State : 

"By the oppression to which we were subjected under the yoke 
of Britain, and against which we wrestled so long, so patiently, so 
vigorously, in so many ways, and at last so triumphantly, I adjure 
you to put an end at once, and forever, to the disreputable and des- 
potic business of holding slaves. African slavery, as practised in 
America, is oppression indeed, in comparison with which, that which 
drew forth our angry and bitter complaints against England was very 
freedom. Let us, instead of perpetuating the infamous system of 
slavery, be true to ourselves ; let us vindicate the pretensions we set 
up when we characterize ours as the 'land of liberty, the asylum of 
the oppressed,' by proclaiming to the nations of the earth that, so 
soon as a slave touches the soil of the United States, his manacles 
shall fall from him: let us verity the words engraven in enduring 
brass on the old bell which, from the tower of Independence Hall, 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 307 

rang out our glorious Declaration, and indeed and in truth proclaim 
' Liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison doors to them 
that are bound.' As you value truth, honor, justice, consistency — 
aye, humanity even, wipe out the black blot which defiles the border 
of our escutcheon, and the country will then be in reality what it is 
now only in name, a free country, loving liberty disinterestedly for 
its own sake, and for that of all peoples, and nations, and tribes, and 
tongues." 

MARGARET DOUGLASS. 

In a highly interesting narrative of her sufferings, Mrs. 
Douglas, a native of Washington city, who was imprisoned 
in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1854, for " teaching negro children to 
read and write, contrary to the statutes in such cases made 
and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the Com- 
monwealth," says : 

" I now approach a subject vitally connected with the interests of 
the South and the welfare of humanity. In doing so, I have no ran- 
cor or malice to serve, but boldly speak my miud, and tell my 
Southern sisters a truth which, however they may have learned it 
by sad experience, has probably never been thus presented to them 
before. It is the one great evil hanging over the Soiithern Slave 
States, destroying domestic happiness and the peace of thousands. It 
is summed up in the single word — Amalgamation. This, and this 
only, causes the vast extent of ignorance, degradation, and crime, 
that lies like a black cloud over the whole South. And the practice 
is more general than even Southerners are willing to allow. "While 
even the Northern libertine usually revolts from the intimate society 
of those in whose veins courses a drop of black blood, the Southern 
'gentleman' takes them to his very bosom and revels in their fancied 
charms, until satiety disgusts him, when he deliberately sells them 
into lower degradation, as he would a disabled horse. 

" It is impossible to deny that this unnatural custom prevails to a 
fearful extent throughout the South. The testimony is of too posi- 
tive and personal a character to be overcome. Neither is it to bo 



308 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

found only in the lower order of the white population. It pervades 
the entire society. Its followers are to be found aiming all ranks, 
occupations, and professions. The white mothers and daughters of 
the South have suffered under it for years — have seen their dearest 
affections trampled upon — their hopes of domestic happiness destroy ed 
— and their future lives embittered, even to agony, by those who 
should be all in all to them as husbands, sons, and brothers. I can- 
not use too strong language in reference to this subject, for I know it 
will meet with a heartfelt response from every Southern woman. I 
would deal delicately with them if I could, but they know the fact, 
and their hearts bleed under its knowledge, however they may have 
attempted to conceal their discoveries. Southern wives know that 
their husbands come to them reeking with pollution from the arms 
of their tawny mistresses. Father and son seek the same sources of 
excitement, and alike gratify their inhuman propensities, scarcely 
blushing when detected, and recklessly defying every command of 
God and every tie of morality and human affection. They have not 
even the paltry excuse that ordinary libertines sometimes make, that 
their love is real though illicit — the whole practice is plainly, une- 
quivocally, shamelessly beastly. Is there any wonder, then, that 
people addicted to these habits are rapidly returning to a state of 
semi-barbarism ? 

"Is it to be supposed that the ordinary teachings of nature do not 
tell the sable sons and daughters of the South that this custom is 
inhuman and ungodly ? Is not chastity a natural instinct, even 
among the most savage nations of the earth ? Will not the natural 
impulses rebel against what becomes with them a matter of force ? 
The female slave, however fair she may have become, by the various 
comminglings of her progenitors, or whatever her mental and moral 
acquirements, knows that she is a slave, and as such, powerless be- 
neath the whims or fancies of her master. If he casts upon her a 
desiring eye, she knows that she must submit, There is no way of 
escape, and her only thought is, that the more gracefully she yields 
the stronger and longer hold she may, perchance, retain upon the 
brutal appetite of her master. Still she feels her degradation, and 
so do others with whom she is connected. She has parents, brothers 
aud sisters, a lover perhaps, all of whom suffer through and with her, 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 309 

and in whose hearts spring up i oots of bitterness which are destined 
to grow into trees whose branches will sooner or later overshadow 
the whole land." 

SARAH M. GRIMKE. 

. In her " Reasons for Action at the North," Miss Grinike, 
an estimable, right-minded lady, from South Carolina, says : 

"Let Northerners respectfully ask for an alteration in that part of 
the Constitution by which they are bound to assist the South in quell- 
ing servile insurrections. Let them see to it that they send no man 
to Congress who would give his vote to the admission of another 
Slave State into the national Union. Let them protest against the 
injustice and cruelty of delivering the fugitive slave back to his mas- 
ter as being a direct infringement of the Divine command. Let them 
petition their different legislatures to grant a jury trial to the friend- 
less, helpless runaway, and for the repeal of those laws which secure 
to the slaveholder his unjust claim to his slave, after he has volun- 
tarily brought him within the verge of their jurisdiction, and for the 
enactment of such laws as will protect the colored man, woman, and 
child from the fangs of tbe kidnapper, who is constantly "skulking 
about in the Northern States, seeking whom he may devour. Let 
the Northern churches refuse to receive slaveholders at their com- 
munion tables, or to permit slaveholding ministers to officiate in 
their pulpits." 

ANGELINA E. WELD. 

In her eloquent " Appeal to the Women of the Nominally 
Free States," Mrs. Weld, of New Jersey, formerly Miss 
Grimke, of South Carolina, says: 

"It is not the' character alone of the mistress that is deeply injured 
by the possession and exercise of despotic power, nor is it the degra- 
dation and suffering to which the slave is continually subject; but 
another important consideration is, that in consequence of the dread- 
ful state of morals at the South, the wife and the daughter sometimes 



310 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMrOEAEIICS. 

find their homes a scene of the most mortifying, heart-rending prefe- 
rence of the degraded domestic, or the colored daughter of the head 
of the family. There are, alas, too many families, of which the con- 
tentions of Abraham's household is a fair example. But we forbear 
to lift the veil of private life any higher ; let these few hints suffice 
to give you some idea of what is daily passing lehind that curtain 
which has been so carefully drawn before the scenes of domestic life 
in slaveholding America." 

LUCEETIA MOTT. 

Mrs. Mott, who, for more than a quarter of a century, has, 
with admirable clearness and emphasis, borne unwavering 
testimony against Slavery, says : 

" While we aid, to the extent of our power, the fugitive from in- 
justice and oppression, let us not yield to solicitations for money to 
purchase his freedom from his claimants ; thus acknowledging a right 
of property in man, and giving an indirect support to slavery. Rather 
let our main and most vigorous exertions be directed to the over- 
throw of the outrageous system of American Slavery. . . . Im- 
mediate emancipation is therefore to be advocated, because of the 
slave's right to himself, and the duty of the master no less to yield 
to him that right. All attempts at gradualism have failed ; and all 
experience proved the safety of doing right now, at onceP 

MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN. 

Mrs. Chapman, whose earnest, efficient labors in the cause 
of Freedom will ever be gratefully remembered, says : 

" Never were our prospects so encouraging as now. Even those 
who hate the cause are made its servants. How could we, few in 
numbers and feeble in resources, make ourselves heard through the 
land, in vindication of our principles? Providence has provided for 
this contingency, in supplying us with opposers, to whom right seen is 
so great an absurdity, and truth so really ridiculous, that they assume 



TESTIMONY OF OUE CONTEMPORARIES. 311 

the trouble and expense of this promulgation, under the idea that 
principle can be overwhelmed by odium. Happily there is in every 
human heart that which responds to right and truth ; and what was 

relied on for our defeat bids fair to secure our success 

Our efforts must be strenuous and open for the promulgation of the 
principles of freedom, on which rest the welfare of our country and 
our posterity. We are working for all coming time, and the 
thought cheers and strengthens us for continually renewed labors. 
We have had progenitors who have labored for us, and we must 
repay the debt to those who shall come after us. One generation of 
them left its fatherland for religious freedom ; another gave up the 
summer of its years for civil liberty ; and grateful though we are to 
have been born of that npble strain, our heaviest labor should not be 
to build our fathers' sepulchres. It is for us to finish the work they 
left undone, so that our children shall rise up and call us blessed. It 
lies mainly with us to determine whether our children, or at furthest 
our children's children, shall dwell in the land we leave them in free- 
dom and in peace, surrounded by bappy and joyous influences; or 
whether their lives shall pass in convulsive struggles with an injured 
race, awakened to a sense of wrong, and thirst of vengeance, by a 
comparison of republican theory with republican practice." 

JOHN C. UNDERWOOD. 

Remonstrating against the consummate system of despo- 
tism which exiled him from his home and family in Virginia, 
in 185C, Mr. Underwood says : 

" The history of the world, and especially of the States of this 
Union, shows, most conclusively, that public prosperity bears an 
almost mathematical proportion to the degree of freedom enjoyed by 
all the inhabitants of the State. Men will always work better for 
the cash than for the lash. The free laborer will produce and save 
as much, and consume and waste as little as he can. The slave, on. 
the contrar} r , will produce and save as little, and consume and waste 
as much as possible. Hence States and countries filled with tho 
former class must necessarily flourish and increase in population, arts, 



312 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPOK ARIES. 

manufactures, wealth and education, because they are animated and 
incited by all the vigor of the will, while States and countries filled 
Avith the latter class, must exhibit comparative stagnation, because 
it is a universal law of nature that force and fear end in ruin and 
decay. We have an instructive example of one class in the activity, 
enterprise, prosperity and intelligence of New England, and of the 
other in the pitiable condition of poor South Carolina, a State which, 
by neglecting the teachings of her Marions, and following her But- 
lers, her Brookses, her Keitts and her Quattlebums, in the race of 
aristocracy and Africanization, is rapidly sinking into agricultural 
sterility, bloated egotism, and brutal barbarism, until she has most 
significantly adopted a cane for her emblem, which equally and 
strikingly typifies her military resources, and that imbecility and 
decrepitude which, without something to lean upon, must inevitably 
fall into speedy death and dissolution." 



DANIEL E. GOODLOE. 

Mr. Goodloe, now of "Washington city, formerly of North 
Carolina, says : 

" The history of the United States shows, that while the Slave 
States increase in population less rapidly than the Free, there is a 
tendency in slave society to diffusion, greater than is exhibited by 
free society. In fact, diffusion or extension of area, is one of the 
necessities of slavery ; the prevention of which is regarded as 
directly and immediately menacing to the existence of the institu- 
tion. This arises from the almost exclusive application of slave 
labor to the one occupation of agriculture, and the difficulty, if not 
impossibility, of diversifying employments. Free society, on the 
contrary, has indefinite resources of development within a restricted 
area. It will far excel slave society in the cultivation of the ground, 
first, on account of the superior intelligence of the laborers; and 
secondly, in consequence of the greater and more various demands 
upon the earth's products, where commerce, manufactures, and the 
arts, abound. Then, these arts of life, by bringing men together in 



TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES. 313 

cities and towns, and employing them in the manufacture or trans- 
portation of the raw materials of the farmer, give rise to an indefinite 
increase of wealth and population. The confinement of a free peo- 
ple within narrow limits seems only to develop new resources of 
wealth, comfort and happiness ; while slave society, pent up, withers 
and dies. It must continually be fed by new fields and forests, to 
be wasted and wilted under the poisonous tread of the slave." 

BENJAMIN S. HEDEICK. 

For daring to have political opinions of his own, and 
because he did not deem it his duty to conceal the fact that 
he loved liberty better than slavery, Prof. Hedrick, whose 
testimony w T e now offer, was peremptorily dismissed from his 
post as Analytical and Agricultural Chemist in the University 
of North Carolina, ignominiously subjected to the indignities 
of a mob, and then savagely driven beyond the borders of 
his native State. His tyrannical persecutors, if not called to 
settle their accounts in another world within the next ten 
years, will probably survive to repent of the enormity of 
their pro-slavery folly. 

In a letter vindicating his course at Chapel Hill — his only 
offence having been a mild expression of opinion in favor 
of .Republicanism — Prof. II. says : 

" Of my neighbors, friends and kindred, nearly one-half have left 
the State since I was old enough to remember. Many is the time I 
have stood by the loaded emigrant wagon, and given the parting 
hand to those whose faces I was never to look upon again. They 
were going to seek homes in the free West, knowing, as they did, 
that free and slave labor could not both exist and prosper in the 
same community. If any one think that I speak without know- 
ledge, let him refer to the last census. He will there find that in 
1850 there were fifty-eight thousand native North Carolinians living 
in the Free States of the "West — thirty-three thousand in Indiana 
alone. There were, at the same time, one hundred and eighty thou- 

14 



314 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

sand Virginians living in the Free States. Now, if these people 
•were so much in love with the ' institution,' why did they not 
remain where they could enjoy its blessings? 

"From my knowledge of the people of North Carolina, I believe 
that the majority of them who will go to Kansas during the next 
five years, would prefer that it should be a Free State. I am sure 
that if I were to go there I should vote to exclude slavery." 

MONCURE D. CONWAY. 

In his volume entitled " Tracts for To-day," Mr. Conway, 
of Cincinnati, Ohio, formerly of Virginia, says : 

" As a Virginian, with no ties of relationship northward of the 
remotest kind, past or present, I feel how easily I might slide into a 
justification of my dear mother, the South. But the soul knows no 
prejudices or sections, and must see all under the pure light of rea- 
son and conscience I fear that, with the majority of us, 

the binding of a slave is not so horrible as the doubting of a miracle. 
. . . . The first error of the South has been an impatience in 
the discussion of the slavery question, reminding calm men of those 
unfortunate persons met with in lunatic asylums, Avho speak ration- 
ally on all topics until you touch that on which they are deranged, 
when their insanity bursts wildly forth. This has caused them to 
put themselves in an attitude before the world which has brought 
down its severest censure; and, feeling that this was not just what 
they deserved — since they were at least sincere — it has led them on 
to a still greater rage against a judgment which, however unfair, 
was the result of their own mistaken heat. It has precluded free- 
dom of discussion even among themselves, a policy which no human 
brain or heart ever respected yet. The native sons of the South 
have again and again sought to discuss it in their own vicinities, and 
have as often been threatened and visited with angry processes, 
though the privilege is secured to them in the Bill of Eights of 
nearly every Southern State. The South lias thus lost the confi- 
dence of many of her own children, who find that a freedom exer- 
cised by their lordly ancestors "Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 315 

by them transmitted as an eternal inheritance, is now denied them 
by men who, beside those, are lilliputian." 



J. E. SNODGRASS. 

Vindicating his course, as editor of the " Baltimore Satur- 
day Visitor," against an unsuccessful attempt of certain 
members of the Maryland legislature, in 1846, to suppress his 
paper and procure his imprisonment, Dr. Snodgrass, of 
Virginia, more recently of Maryland, now of New York, 
said : 

"There need be no fear of my arraying the slave against his mas- 
ter (as I have been charged with doing), however anxious I may be 
to array the sympathies of the master in favor of his slave ; in other 
words, to bring about the abolition of slavery in Maryland by lawful 
as well as peaceful means, and with results which shall convince my 
accusers tbat I have been the best friend of both master and slave, 
and that the adoption of such views as I have been wont to pro- 
mulge on all suitable occasions, both in the 'Visitor' and in my 
private intercourse with my fellow-citizens, would be the surest 
guaranty of the glorious redemption of Maryland from the thralldom 
of an institution which has been her ever-present curse, hanging as 
it does, like an incubus upon the prosperity of the State, and utterly 
crashing her every hope of future progress." 

JOHN G. FEE. 

Iii his " Anti-Slavery Manual," Mr. Fee, a noble, self-sacri- 
ficing preacher of a free Gospel in Kentucky, says : 

" Slavery causes the slaves to disregard the relation of marriage, 
and practise the consequent vice, concubinage. In our land, mar- 
riage, as a civil ordinance, they do not enjoy. Our laws do not 
recognize this relation among them, nor defend it, nor enforce its 
duties. This would interfere with the claims and interest of the 
master. Hence, to use the language of the slaves themselves, they 



316 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

' take up with one another.' And this continues as long as their 
own convenience, and that of the master, requires. 

" Marriage is the great preservative against the abhorrent vices of 
concubinage and adultery. It is the origin of those strong ties 
which cement and bind together society. It is the fountain of the 
dearest earthly pleasures that man enjoys — domestic bliss. Without 
it, the endearing relations of husband and wife, parent and child, 
would be unknown. Without it, man and woman would wander 
forth, selfish, shameless, and unrestrained, like one vast herd of 
brutes. And yet the very tendency of our system of slavery is to 
abolish it. Christians! yea, all lovers of virtue and order! what 
would you think, and how would you act, did these evils exist to the 
same extent among the whites ? And are they any the less ruinous 
to society \ and any the less criminal in the sight of God, in the black 
man than in the white man ? How many there are among us who 
are parents, and yet know no one whom they can call husband or 
wife ! And how many, even of those in whose veins courses much 
of the blood of the white man", who know not their parents ! Oh ! 
is it true that there is a single woman in the whole South who is 
opposed to the abolition of slavery, when she remembers how many 
bosoms have been wrung with anguish at the reflection that the hus- 
bands of their choice have been unfaithful, in cases that never would 
have occurred had it not been for slavery? And I will ask one 
more question. Is there in our State, even among Christians, as 
much regard for the purity of the marriage relation of their slaves, 
and the proper descent of slave children, as there is to have the best 
stock of sheep, hogs, cattle, to say nothing of horses? May God 
pardon our shameful neglect of a relation which he has so greatly 
honored." 

JAMES D. PRETTYMAX. 

As editor of the " Peninsular News and Advertiser," pub- 
lished in Milford, Del., Dr. Prettyman, who is there laboring 
manfully for the right, says : 

" The great question to be settled by the people of this country in 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 317 

this the nineteenth century, is, whether this boasted land of freedom 
shall become a nation of masters and slaves, or whether it sball be 
made a land, tbe atmosphere of which no slave can breathe and live 
a slave. . . . "We were born in a land of slavery, have lived in a 
land of slavery, and are now writing in a land which is deeply in- 
jured by slavery, and have had an opportunity to see and know 
something of its inhumanity and wrong. "We often wonder by what 
process of reasoning men justify themselves in advocating the base, 
blighting institution. Slavery is bad policy, it is an obstacle to the 
prosperity of the State, it has a demoralizing effect on both master 
and slave, it is the origin of inhumanity, injustice and crime ; but far 
above all other arguments, objections, and sentiments of policy stands 
the unconcealed truth, that it is wrong. It originated in wrong ; it 
is the greatest wrong of our age." 



JOHN DIXON LONG. 

In his " Pictures of Slavery," the painting of which aroused 
the mobocratic ire of his slaveholding neighbors, who forced 
him to leave the State, Mr. Long, of Maryland, a minister of 

the Methodist Episcopal Church, says : 

" It is contended that if the General Conference should make slave- 
holding a test of membership, the preachers will not attempt to 
carry it out in slaveholding territory. Very well. Then the respon- 
sibility will rest on the preachers and members of that particular 
locality. The church at large and the discipline would be free from 
slaveholding taint ; and brethren at the North and West would no 
longer have their cheeks mantled with shame, when infidels point to 
the discipline as it is, and prove that it allows men to hold human 
beings in ignorance and slavery, and will them at death to ungodly 
relatives, who may sell them as oxen. Let no man in the ministry 
or the laity of the M. E. Church leave her communion because her 
discipline is not yet perfect ; but let him pray and labor, and lift up 
his voice against the abominations of chattel slavery, till a sound 
public opinion shall blow it away like chaff before the whirlwind.'' 



318 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

WILLIAM S. BAILEY. 

In his paper of May 13, 1859, in an article on the guberna- 
torial campaign, then progressing in his State, Mr. Bailey, 
the fearless editor of the " Free South," formerly published 
in Newport, Kentucky, said : 

" It must strike the mind of every reflecting man in Kentucky, as 
something strange and abnormal, to see the rank and file of the two 
political parties in the State engaged in a rivalry for extending over 
the domain of the Union the system of human chattelism which has 
been a blight and a curse to their own commonwealth. Such mad- 
cap zeal and transparent folly cannot long sway the minds of intelli- 
gent and honest men. There must be a reaction speedily, unless the 
propagandists succeed in carrying their measures, and in binding the 
white freemen of the country in fetters, before they become aroused 
to the impending danger. 

" The present discussion, though of little moment in itself con- 
sidered, may have some beneficial results. It may open the eyes of 
some men who have heretofore seemed half asleep, to the humili- 
ating and disgraceful fact tbat our governments, State and National, 
are fast becoming mere engines for the perpetuation and propagation 
of slavery. In this direction, they are impelled by the slaveholding 
oligarchy, which aims at nothing short of the entire subjection of 
the whole country to the iron will of its despotism." 

RICHARD HILDRETH. 

In his " Despotism in America," Mr. Ilildretb, the eminent 
historian, says : 

" Slavery is a continuation of the state of war. It is true that one 
of the combatants is subdued and bound; but the war is not ter- 
minated. If I do not put the captive to death, this apparent clem- 
ency does not arise from any good will toward him, or any extinc- 
tion on my part of hostile feelings and intentions. I spare his life 
merely because I exnect to be able to put him to a use more 



TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES. 319 

advantageous to myself. And if the captive, on the other hand, 
feigns submission, still he is only watching for an opportunity to 
escape my grasp, and if possible to inflict upon me evils as great as 
those to which I have subjected him. 

" War is justly regarded, and with the progress of civilization it 
comes every day more and more to be regarded, as the very greatest 
of social calamities. The introduction of slavery into a community, 
amounts to an eternal protraction of that calamity, and a universal 
diffusion of it through the whole mass of society, and that, too, in 
its most ferocious form." 

■ 

THEODORE TILTON. 

In his speech before the New York Anti-Slavery Society, in 
the City Assembly Rooms, May 11, 1859, Mr. Tilton says : 

" If there were no slavery on the face of the earth — I mean no per- 
sonal bodily servitude such as exists in the Southern States — there 
would still be need of anti-slavery societies. Not perhaps called by 
that name. But there would still be a need of declaring the great 
truth of man's freedom ; of man's immortality through his freedom, 
and of man's freedom through his immortality. This is a thing of 
continual need ; this is the province of anti-slavery societies to de- 
clare ; this is the thing I declare to-night. I can point you to a 
hundred men in every street whose minds, hardly once in their life- 
time, ever rise to the dignity of a noble thought ! There are honest 
men, industrious men, useful men,*good men, who think never of 
principles, but only of things — whose judgments are of goods and 
prices, ships and freights, houses and comforts, friendships and plea- 
sures — who have no interest whatever in great moral and eternal 
truths. There are men who live like mice among the ground-leaves 
of forests — who never come out of their little retreats — whose lives 
are bounded with a narrow horizon — who not only never give birth 
to a great idea themselves, but are not fit even to be nurses to keep 
alive, in their breasts, a great idea born of some one else. On the 
other hand, there are men, large-minded and generous, who soar like 
eagles through the air, whose lives seem lifted into a higher and 



320 TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES. 

nobler sphere, to whom a great truth is of more value than a freighted 
ship — because it has more precious freight; to whom the progress of 
a great idea through the world is a cause for which they would will- 
ingly live, and for which they would willingly die! Now, do you 
suppose that to these different orders of men, at these different points 
of development, the thought of freedom comes with the same mean- 
ing, and the same unspeakable value ? I tell you that there are men 
who sit in the solitude of the study, busy at work with pen and ink, 
to whom this thought comes like the thrill of old wine in the pulse, 
while there are others to whom it comes only as sunshine to blind 
men, who enjoy a measure of its comfort, but never know with what 
glory God sent it to fill the world ! . . . . Freedom is proved 
to be man's right, because it is man's necessity. It is the first essen- 
tial condition of true manhood. I mean not merely freedom of the 
body, but of the mind ; yet I mean also freedom of the body for the 
sake of the mind ; for the body is made honorable by the nature 
which it enshrines." 

O. B. FROTHINGHAM. 

In his speech before the American Anti-Slavery Society, in 
New York, May 8, 185G, Rev. Mr. Frothingham inquired : 

" When shall we learn to speak plainly and sincerely against 
slavery, and to follow up our speech by our deeds? When shall we 
learn to throw our whole action unreservedly on the side of God ? 
When will we believe that he w^io seeks first the kingdom of heaven 
shall have everything else added to him ? They threaten us with war 
if we take this position. Useless threat ! The war is already de- 
clared ! The war has already begun ! The war has been raging for 
half a century ! Slavery itself is a condition of war. It had its 
origin in Avar, its first victims being captives of the spear. It lives 
by war — its agents being perpetually engaged in fomenting feuds 
between the native princes of Africa to gain materials for their traffic. 
It protects itself by war — it hides behind walls and gates — it rings 
alarm bells ; its barracks' are guarded by armed patrols — it never 
walks abroad without bowie-knife and pistol — it appears in Boston, 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 321 

and the streets bristle with files of soldiery — the hall of justice is 
stunned by the din of arms — outcast ruffians and murderers stalk 
about insulting the citizens. It extends itself by war, riding into 
Kansas with rifle and halter, to oonquer a territory it has stolen ; sub- 
stituting martial for civil law, and proclaiming the warrior's axiom 
that might is right. The very virtues incident to a state of slavery, 
the virtues of the dominant class, are warlike virtues such as belong 
to the soldier alone. The dashing recklessness, the hot-blooded 
chivalry, the lavish generosity, the fiery sense of honor, the careless 
gaiety, the frank, easy good-nature, the impetuous passion, whether 
of love or hate, the swaggering grace, the luxury, all mark the soldier. 
Such qualities are peculiar to feudal, which is military society. 
Slavery is ever breathing menaces of war. On the least provocation 
it offers battle. For fifty years it has kept the country on the brink 
of civil broils. Only the greatest moderation on our part has saved 
us from bloodshed. It has submitted Boston to martial rule ; it is 
waging war in Kansas. The North stands on the defensive with a 
pistol pointed at her breast. What is to be done ? We must fight- 
in behalf of peace and order we must fight." 

PARKE GODWIN. 

In his volume entitled " Political Essays," Mr. Godwin, 
who always treats his subjects with remarkable elucidation 
and thoroughness, says : 

"When the Constitution of the United States was formed, slavery 
existed in nearly all the States; but it existed as an acknowledged 
evil, which, it was hoped, the progress of events would, in the course 
pf a few years, extinguish. With the exception of South Carolina 
there was not a State in which some decided efforts had not been 
made toward its alleviation and ultimate removal. It was this feel- 
ing, that it was an evil, and that it would soon be abated, which ex- 
cluded all mention of slavery by name from the Constitution, and 
which led to the adoption of such phraseology, in the parts referring 
to the subject, that they do not necessarily imply its existence. The 
Constitution was made for all time, while the makers of it supposed 

14* 



322 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES 

slavery to be but a transient fact, and the terms of it consequently 
were adapted to the larger purpose, and not to the temporary exis- 
tence. A jurist from the interior of China, who knew nothing of the 
actual condition of our country, or Justinian, could he arise from the 
dead, would never learn, from the mere reading of that instrument, 
of the existence of slavery. He would read of ' persons held to ser- 
vice,' and of certain ' other persons,' who were to be counted only 
as three-fifths in the distribution of representative population ; but 
he would' never imagine them, unless expressly told, a species of 
property. The general sentiment was averse to slavery, and the men 
of the Eevolution were unwilling to recognize it, except in an indi- 
rect and roundabout way, and then only, as they expected, for a 
limited period." 

CHARLES W. ELLIOTT. 

In the second volume of Ms excellent History of New 
England, Mr. Elliott says : 

" A State is good or bad exactly in the degree in which it secures 
to each and all liberty to act out their individual natures according 
to the true principles of humanity and justice. Perfect society is 
complete individuality, acting in harmony with true law. The love 
of society is one of the strongest instincts of man's nature ; it is a 
necessity. A hermit, therefore, is a monster, and anarchy impossi- 
ble. It is also true that change and re-formation are a law of nature, 
opposed by stupidity, timidity, and selfish inaction. It is clear, too, 
that governments have, heretofore, been organized and upheld by the 
few for their own benefit, and the world has had only aristocracies 
and class legislation. The Eepublics of Greece and Eome were not 
republics, for they rested on a writhing people held in slavery. No 
such governments can or ought to continue long in peace, for revolt 

is the only remedy for the oppressed New England has 

done much to colonize and civilize the wide Western prairies, and 
wherever her men and women go, order, decency, industry, and edu- 
cation prevail over barbarism and violence. But she has more work 
to do ; we may hope that she will shake off that old man of the sea 
who hangs upon her — may more fully learn that principle is above 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 323 

profit, and a sound heart is better than a silver dollar — that she will 
lay her hand to the building up of galleries, and museums, and libra- 
ries, as well as of mills and workshops ; and that she will not fear to 
meet and drive back the black brood of slavery to its own place, and 
assert, and maintain, and extend the rule of Eight over Might ; so 
that in the future, Democracy — the rights of all — may everywhere 
prevail over Aristocracy, which secures the privileges of the few, but 
perpetuates the wrongs of the many." 



WILLIAM HENRY BURLEIGH. 

In a volume of his fugitive poems, the reading of which 
has afforded us a high degree of pleasure, Mr. Burleigh says : 

"Now, tyrants! look well to your path! 

A cloud shall come over your fame, 
And the terrible storm of a free people's wrath, 

Overwhelm you with anguish and shame ! 
To years and to ages unborn, 

Throughout every kindred and clime, 
Ye shall be as a by-word, a hissing and scorn, 

To the pure and the good of all time ! 
The curse of the slave and the taunt of the free 

Henceforth and forever your portion shall be ! 



Thank God ! that a limit is set 

To the reach of the tyrant's control ! 
That the down-trodden serf may not wholly forget 

The right and the might of his soul ! 
That though years of oppression may dim 

The fire on the heart's altar laid, 
Yet lit by the breath of Jehovah, like Him 

It lives, and shall live, undecayed! 
Will the fires of the mountain grow feeble and die ? 

Beware ! — for the tread of the Earthquake is nigh." 



324: TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 



CHARLES C. BURLEIGH. 

On the subject of " Slavery and the North," Mr. Burleigh 
says : 

"The question of slavery is undeniably, for this country at least, 
the great question of the age. On the right decision of it depend 
interests too vast to be fitly set forth in words. Here are three mil- 
lions of slaves in a land calling itself free ; three millions of human 
beings robbed of every right, and, by statute and custom, among a 
people self-styled Christian, held as brutes. Knowledge is forbidden, 
and religious worship, if allowed, is clogged with fetters ; the sanctity 
of marriage is denied ; and home and family and all the sacred names 
of kindred, which form the dialect of domestic love, are made un- 
meaning words. The soul is crushed, that the body may be safely 
coined into dollars. And not occasionally, by here and there a hard- 
ened villain, reckless alike of justice, law, and public sentiment; fear- 
ing not God nor regarding man; but on system, and by the combined 
strength of the whole nation. Most men at the North, and many 
even at the South, admit that this is wrong, all wrong — in morals, in 
policy every way wrong — that it is a gross injustice to the slave, a 
serious evil to the master, a great calamity to the country ; that it 
belies the nation's high professions, brings deep disgrace upon its 
character, and exposes it to unknown perils and disasters in the time 
to come." 

J. MILLER MCKIM. 

In his speech in the City Assembly Rooms, New York, 
May 11, 1859, Mr. McKim said: 

" What the anti-slave trade agitation did incidentally for England, 
the anti-slaveholding agitation is doing collaterally for this country. 
It is rectifying public sentiment on all great questions of prerogative 
and duty. It is improving our politics, meliorating our religion, and 
raising the standard of public and social morals. The evidence of 
this is so palpable, that no one with eyes can fail to see it. . . . 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 325 

In religion, the change, though less easily measured, is none the less 
striking. Ecclesiastically, as well as politically, anti-slavery has been 
a benefactor. It has stripped hypocrisy of its disguise, and divested 
priestcraft of much of its power for evil. Let me not be misunder- 
stood ; I use this language in no sectarian sense. In what I say I 
allude to mere professional clergymen ; men who live by religion as 
demagogues do by politics ; Protestant as well as Catholic Tetzels, 
who peddle Christianity as a trade, and subsist on its profits. . . . 
The literature of the country has been revolutionized by our move- 
ment. Anti-slavery publications used to be burned in Charleston, 
and drowned in Philadelphia. Paulding and Park Benjamin, and 
the like, held sway in the republic of letters. Carey and Hart ex- 
purgated Longfellow's poems to increase their profits, and Hildreth 
and Whittier were only read by such as found their way into the 
anti-slavery office. How changed is everything now. The entire 
literature of the country — everything that is worthy of the name — is 
against slavery. Pro-slavery booksellers grow rich on anti-slavery 
novels, and pandering theatrical managers put money in their purses 
from abolition dramas. All the best daily and weekly journals, and 
monthly and quarterly magazines, are anti-slavery." 

WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS. 

In his " Derby Lecture," the Rev. Dr. Furness, of Phila- 
delphia, says : 

"If we possessed the good that God hath showed us, were we 
obedient to his requisitions", were we to do justly, the fetters of the 
slave would disappear as if consumed by fire before the majestic and 
all-commanding sense of justice expressed in the action of the free 
Northern heart. Does any one ask at this late day, when the giant 
wrong which our country legalizes and fights for, threatens to strip 
us of the dearest attributes of freedom and humanity — does any one 
ask, what have we to do with the injustice that exists not here but 
in another part of the land ? I answer freely, distinctly, emphati- 
cally, nothing. In simple justice we have no right to have anything 
to do with it. We have no right to stand guard over it as we do, 



326 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

v 

with our unjust prejudices, more fatal than muskets or artillery. We 
have no right to surrender to it the sacred principle of freedom of 
speech, as we have done. We have no right to afford it the broad 
protection of our silence, as we do. We have no right to allow it to 
flourish in the capital of the nation, as we do. We have no right to 
aid in extending and perpetuating and fighting for it, as, may God 
have mercy on us ! we have done, and are doing. As we are doing 
all these unjust things, we are guilty of interfering most imperti- 
nently with things with which we have no right to interfere. We 
must turn over a new leaf, and learn, hard as the lesson may be, to 
mind every one his own business. And what is our business ? Why, 
to do justly. It is what God specially requires of us, to cease from 
doing evil; to maintain freedom of speech, that precious thing with- 
out which our civil security is but stubble, which the outbursting 
fires of violent passions may at any moment consume ; to guard the 
public liberties in the person of the meanest of the land ; to destroy 
injustice of all kinds, and let the voice of humanity, the swelling 
key-note of the world, be heard, pleading for the right." 

A. I). MAYO. 

In his new miscellaneous work, " Symbols of the Capital," 
a volume full of vigorous essays and fascinating delineations 
of life in the Empire State, the Rev. Mr. Mayo says : 

" The question of free labor is not to be argued so much from its 
economical results, though here the argument is triumphant, as from 
its spiritual aspects. Every true son of Adam will maintain that the 
happiest word that ever greeted his ears was his command to leave 
the Eden of childish innocence for a wilderness of manly toil. Free 
industry is for the elevation and education of the race. All human 
experience has demonstrated that the only way to greatness of any 
kind is the straight and narrow way of labor. And when man toils, 
in the exercise of his great attribute of freedom, lie is in the way to 
gain his chief distinction. Creation is the grandest attribute of 
man, the point in which he approaches nearest his maker. To 
create new combinations from the material universe ; by the disci- 



TESTIMONY OF OUE CONTEMPORARIES. 327 

pline of free industry to discover the creative laws of Omnipotence, 
and by obedience to them to express his best conceptions of exist- 
ence ; to impress himself on the whole earth, and even fill the invisi- 
ble elements with the finer energy of his victorious mind ; especially 
to create in the realm of spirit ; molding human nature into higher 
forms of individual and social life, and by a far-reaching insight, 
peopling the realms of imagination with new and glorious beings, 
which bear the seal of reality, and become the ideals of the gener- 
ations. This is God-like, and only through Free Labor can man ap- 
proach this throne of his power, and rise into the companionship 
of the creative love of the Father of all." 

THOMAS DAVIS. 

In the course of one of the best speeches ever made on the 
Kansas question — a speech replete with irrefutable facts and 
arguments — the delivery of which, in the House of Represen- 
tatives, May 9, 1854, at once distinguished him in Congress 
and throughout the country, Mr. Davis of Rhode Island, said : 

" The despotism of slavery is not standing on its own basis, or 
defended by its own power, force or ingenuity. It calls to its aid, 
and insists upon the obligation enforced by the doctrine that the 
Constitution of the United States requires of the General Government 
to protect, maintain, and extend slavery. It is no longer an evil to 
be tolerated or endured, but, in the estimation of its fanatical advo- 
cates, it is to be extended and perpetuated. 

"It is maintained by the combined power of monarchy, as repre- 
sented in the Executive v wielding all the patronage of government 
by directly rewarding those who are subservient to its dictates, and 
proscribing all who dare to exercise with open manliness the right 
of American freemen, in condemnation of its rank injustice. . 

"Next, we have the slaveowners, who are an aristocracy not 
elected by or subject to any higher power, but firmly united by ties 
of common interest, ownership, and. absolute control, amounting to 
a state of perpetual warfare where the weapons are all in the hands 
of one party. These combinations of power, monarchy, and oli- 



328 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

garchy, might be deemed ample for the maintenance of their unholy 
ascendency ; but, sir, it seems it is not enough, for we have now 
a new proclamation in its defence. It finds itself incapable, with 
tl i e a v capons it has heretofore wielded, of accomplishing its pur- 
poses, and it now demands that the great and vital doctrine of the 
sovereignty of the people is peculiarly its own. Thus we have the 
combination of monarchy, or the powers of one man — oligarchy, or 
the favored few ; and democracy, or the powers of the whole people. 
Seizing upon this last principle, it profanes its holy name, using it 
for the purpose of sustaining a system destructive of all human 
rights ; for just in proportion as men feel the force and grandeur of 
their own nature and being, will they regard with sacred reverence 
the rights of others, which in a republic, must be their highest 
security. Chattel slavery strikes at the root of this individual con- 
viction, and is, to an alarming extent, destructive of the principles 
of 'self-government." 

FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED. 

In his " Seaboard Slave States," Mr. Olmsted, the emi- 
nently clever and competent superintendent of the great 
Central Park, in New York city — a traveller and author of 
exquisite discernment and indubitable veracity, writing from 
Norfolk, in Virginia, says : 

" Incidents, trifling in themselves, constantly betray to a stranger 
the bad economy of using enslaved servants. The catastrophe of one 
such occurred since I began to write this letter. I ordered a fire to 
be made in my room, as I was going out this morning. On my 
return, I found a grand fire — the room door having been closed and 
locked upon it, and, by the way, I had to obtain assistance to open 
it, the lock being ' out of order.' Just now, while I was writing, 
down tumbled upon the floor, and rolled away close to the valance 
of the bed, half a hodful of ignited coal, which had been so piled 
up on the diminutive grate, and left without a fender or any guard, 
that this result was almost inevitable. If I had not returned at the 
time I did, the house would have been fired, and probably an incen- 



TESTIMONY OF OUK CONTEMPORARIES. 329 

diary charged with it, while some Northern Insurance Company 

made good the loss to the owner Such carelessness on 

the part of these enslaved servants you have momentarily to notice. 
The constantly occurring delays, and the waste of time and labor 
that you encounter everywhere, are most annoying and provoking. 
The utter want of system and order, almost essential, as it would 
appear, where slaves are your instruments, is amazing. At a hotel, 
for instance, you go to your room and find no conveniences for 
washing ; ring and ring again, and hear the office-keeper ring and 
ring again. At length two servants appear together at your door, 
get orders and go away. A quarter of an hour afterward, perhaps, 
one returns with a pitcher of water, hut no towels ; and so on. . . 
It is impossible that the habits of the whole community should not 
be influenced by, and be made to accommodate to these habits of its 
laborers. It irresistibly affects the whole industrial character of the 
people. You may see it in the habits and manners of the free white 
mechanics and tradespeople. All of these must have dealings or be 
in competition with slaves, and so have their standard of excellence 
made low, and become accustomed to, until they are content with, 
slight, false, unsound workmanship." 



THEODORE D. WELD. 

Wielding a vigorous pen in behalf of a noble cause, the 
Pestalozzi of our country, Mr. Weld, founder and present 
principal of the famous eclectic school at Eagleswood, New 
Jersey, says : 

" There is not a man on earth who does not believe that slavery 
.s a curse. Human beings may be inconsistent, but human nature is 
true to herself. She has uttered her testimony against slavery with 
a shriek ever since the monster was begotten ; and till it perishes 
amidst the execrations of the universe, she will traverse the world 
on its track, dealing her bolts upon its head, and dashing against it 
her condemning brand. "We repeat it, every man knows that slavery 
is a curse. Whoever denies this, his lips libel his heart. Try him ; 



330 TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 

clank the chains in his ears, and tell him they are for him ; give 
him an hour to prepare his wife and children for a life of slavery ; 
bid him make haste and get ready their necks for the yoke, and 
their wrists for the coffle-chains, then look at his pale lips and trem- 
bling knees, and you have nature's testimony against slavery." 

Thus, in the six last chapters, inclusive, have we introduced 
a mass of anti-slavery arguments, human and divine, which 
will stand, irrefutable and convincing, as long as the earth 
itself shall continue to revolve in its orbit. Aside from un- 
affected truthfulness and candor, no merit is claimed for any- 
thing we have said on our own account. With the best of 
motives, and in the language of nature rather than that of 
art, we have simply given utterance to the honest convic- 
tions of our heart — being impelled to it by a long harbored 
and unmistakable sense of duty which grew stronger and 
deeper as the days passed away. 

If half the time which has been spent in collecting and 
arranging these testimonies had been occupied in the compo- 
sition of original matter, the weight of paper and binding, 
and the number of pages would have been much greater ; but 
the value and effect of the contents* would have been far less. 
From the first, our leading motive has been to convince our 
fellow-citizens of the South, non-slaveholders and slaveholders, 
that slavery, whether considered in all its bearings, or setting 
aside the moral aspect of the question, and looking at it only 
in a pecuniary point of view, is impolitic, unprofitable, and 
degrading ; how well, thus far, we have succeeded . in our 
undertaking, time will, perhaps, fully disclose. 

In the words of a contemporaneous German writer, whose 
language we readily and heartily indorse, " It is the shame 
of our age that argument is needed against slavery." Tak- 
ing things as they are, however, argument being needed, we 
have offered it ; and we have offered it from such sources as 



TESTIMONY OF OUR CONTEMPORARIES. 331 

will, in our honest opinion, confound the devil and his incar- 
nate confederates. 

These testimonies, culled from the accumulated wisdom of 
nearly sixty centuries, beginning with the great and good 
men of our own time, and running back through distant ages 
to Saint Paul, Saint John, and Saint Luke ; to Cicero, Plato, 
and Socrates, to Solomon, David and Moses, and even to the 
Deity himself, are the pillars of strength and beauty upon 
which the popularity of our work will, in all probability, be 
principally based. If the ablest writers of the Old Testament ; 
if the eloquent prophets of old; if the renowned philosophers 
of Greece and Rome ; if the heavenly-minded authors and 
compilers of the New Testament ; if the illustrious poets and 
prose-writers, heroes, statesmen, and sages of all nations, an- 
cient and modern ; if God himself and the hosts of learned 
ministers whom he has commissioned to proclaim his word — 
if all these are wrong, then we are wrong ; on the other 
hand, however, if they are right, we are right ; for in effect, 
we only repeat and endeavor to enforce their precepts. 

If we are in error, we desire to be corrected ; and, if it is 
not asking too much, we respectfully request the advocates 
of slavery to favor us with an expose of what they, in their 
one-sided view of things, conceive to be the advantages of 
their favorite and peculiar " institution." Such an expose, if 
skillfully executed, would doubtless be regarded as the fun- 
niest novel of the times — a fit production, if not too immoral 
in its tendencies, to be incorporated into the next edition of 
D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature." 



CHAPTER IX. 

FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 

God fix'd it certain, that, whatever day 
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away. 

Pope's Homer. 
The end will come ; it will not wait ; 
Bonds, yokes, and scourges, have their date; 
Slavery itself must pass away, 
And be a tale of yesterday. 

Montgomery. 

Under this heading we propose to introduce the remainder 
of the more important statistics of the Free and of the Slave 
States ; — especially those that relate to Commerce, Manufac- 
tures, Internal Improvements, Education and Religion. Ori- 
ginally it Avas our intention to devote a separate chapter to 
each of the industrial and moral interests above-named ; hut 
other considerations have so greatly encroached on our space, 
that we are compelled to modify our design. To the thought- 
ful and discriminating reader, however, the chief statistics 
which follow will be none the less interesting for not bein^ 
the subjects of annotation. • 

At present, all we ask of pro-slavery men, no matter in 
what part of the world they may reside, is to look these 
figures thirty in the face. We wish them to do it, in the first 
instance, not on the platforms of public debate, where the ex- 
ercise of eloquence is too often characterized by violent pas- 
sion and subterfuge, but in their own private apartments, 



FKEE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 333 

where no eye save that of the All-seeing One will rest upon 
them, and where, in considering the relations which they sus- 
tain to the past, the present, and the future, an opportunity 
will be afforded them of securing that most valuable of all 
possessions attainable on earth, a conscience void of offence 
toward God and man. 

Each separate table or particular compilation of statistics 
will afford food for at least an hour's profitable reflection ; 
indeed, the more these figures are studied, and the better 
they are understood, the sooner will the author's object be 
accomplished — the sooner will the genius of Universal Liberty 
dispel the dark clouds of slavery. 



334 



FEEE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



TABLE 13. 

TONNAGE, EXPORTS AND IMPORTS OP THE FREE AND OF THE SLAVE 

STATES— 1859. 



FREE 

STATES. 


Tonnage. 


Exports. 


Imports. 


SLAVE 
STATES. 


Ton'ge. 


Exports. 


Imports. 


California, 


80,650 


$15,919,18S 


$11,163,558 


Alabama, 


52,821 


$28,933,662 


$778,164 




115,786 


1,144,311 


491,067| 


Arkansas, 








Illinois, . . . 


73.4S5 


1,269,385 


93,588! 


Delaware, 


22,939 


49,511 


529 


Indiana,.. 









Florida, . . 


20,209 


3,192,362 


2S6,971 


Iowa, 









Georgia, . 


40,478 


15,562,154 


624,645 


Maine,. . . . 


739,846 


8,240,839 


2,157,086 


Kentucky 


29,626 








829,033 


18,168,818 


43,184,500 


Louisiana 


219,881 


101,666,538 


IS i> lfi 


Miclygan, 


74,370 


3,624,624 


1,067,339! 


Maryland 


251, 


9,236,399 


9,713,921 


N. Hamp., 


34,485 


9,793 


23,227| 




3,194 






N. Jersey, 


119,615 


21,938 


5,046' 


Missouri . 


60,759 






New York, 


1,628,651 


117,539,825 


229,181,349' 


N. C...... 


42,918 


435,409 


168,645 


Ohio, 


125,057 


263,011 


267,846 


S. C., .... 


62,567 


17,972,5S0 


1,438,535 


Oregon,.. . 


7,166 


5,000 


2,097i 


Tenn., . . . 


13,046 








2S4,743 


5,375,226 


14,520,331! 


Texas,.... 


12,ls7 


3,855,909 


468,162 


Rhode Is., 


40,471 


310,813 


1,819,068 


Virginia,.. 


84,496 


6,722,162 


1,116,193 


X ermont,.. 


7,033 


1,136,565 


1,MI2,00S 


Dist. of C. 


42,536 






Wisconsin, 


24,864 


699,088 


28,946 




958,957 


$187,626,6S6 






4,1S5,855 


$10S,71S,424 


$305,S07,716 


•$32,955,281 



TABLE 14. 

PRODUCTS AND MANUFACTURES IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE 
STATES— 1850. 



FREE 
STATES. 


Valun of 
Annual Pro- 
ducts. 


Capita] 

Invested. 


Hands 
Empl'd 


SLAVE 

STATES. 


Value of 
Annual Pro- 
ducts. 


Capital 
Invested. 


Han, Is 
Empl'd. 


California, 


$12,862,522 


$1,006,197 


15,904 


Alabama, 


$4,538,S78 


$3,450,000 


4,936 


Conn.,. . . . 


45,110,102 


28,890,848 


47,770 


Arkansas, 


607,436 


324,065 


903 


Illinois, . . . 


17,236,078 


6,885,887 


12,1105 


Delaware, 


4,649,296 


2,978,945 


3,SS8 


Indiana,. . 


L8,922,651 


7,941,602 


14,342 


Florida,. . 


668,388 


547,000 


991 


Iowa, .... 


3,551,783 


1,292,875 


1,707 


Georgia,.. 


7,086,525 


.5,401 1,4-3 


B,878 


Maine,. . . . 


24,664,185 


14,700,452 


28,078 


Kentucky 


24,588,483 


12,850,734 


24,885 


Mass., 


151,137,145 


88,857,642 


165,938 


Louisiana 


7,320,94S 


5,818,074 


6,487 


Michigan, 


10,976,894 


6,534,250 


9,290 


Maryland 


32,477,702 


14,758,143 


30,124 


N. Hamp., 


'-'3,104,503 


1 -,242. 114 


27,092 




2,972,088 


1,833,420 


3,173 


N. Jersey, 


89,713,586 


22,184,730 


87,811 


Missouri,. 


28,749,265 


9,079,695 


16,850 


New York, 


237,597,249 


99,904,405 


199,849 


N. C...... 


9,111,245 


7,252,225 


12,444 


Ohio, 


62,647,259 


29,019,538 


51,489 


s. c, .... 


7,063,513 


6,056,865 


7,009 


Penn., 


155,044,910 


94,478,810 


146,766 


Tenn., . . . 


9,728,488 


6,975,279 


12,032 


Rhode Is., 


22,093j258 


12,923,170 


20,881 


Texas 


1,165,538 


589,290 


1,066 


A ermont,.. 


8,570,920 


5,001,877 


8,445 


Virginia,.. 


29,705,3S7 


18,109,993 


29,109 


Wisconsin, 


9,298,068 


3,382,14s 


6,089 












$842,586,058 


$430,240,051 


780,576 




$165,413,027 


$95,029,879 


161,733 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



335 



TABLE 15. 

MILES OF CANALS AND RAILROADS IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE 

STATES— 1858-1859. 



FREE 
STATES. 


Canals, 
miles. 

1858. 


Railronds, 
miles. 
1859. 


Cost of 

Railroads. 

1859. 


SLAVE 
STATES. 


Canals, 
miles. 
1858. 


Railroads, 
miles, 
1859. 


Cost of 

Railroads, 

1859. 


California, 

Illinois,. . . 
Indiana, . . 

Maine, . . . 

Michigan, 
N. Hamp., 
N. Jersey, 

New York, 
Ohio, 

Rhode Is., 
Vermont,.. 
Wisconsin, 


*102 

543 

"50 

79 

1 

2 

149 

1,040 

796 

1,349 

C 

1 

2 


22 

665 

2,752 

1,327 

395 

544 

1,428 

1,132 

565 

556 

2,756 

3,008 

3,081 

63 

537 

826 


$2,447,100 

25,19S,199 

107,720,937 

31,656,371 

13,347,475 

20,431,701 

65,319,921 

44,072,226 

17,785,111 

26,463,458 

137,077,621 

127,949,123 

149,509,261 

2,747,568 

21,785,752 

44,576,044 

$S7S,07S,S65 


Alabama,. 
Arkansas, 
Delaware, 
Florida,. . . 
Georgia,. . 
Kentucky, 
Louisiana, 
Maryland, 

Miss., 

Missouri,. . 
N. C, .... 

s. c, 

Tennessee, 

Texas, 

Virginia,... 


52 

"l4 

"28 

487 

25 

191 

"l4 

53 

'i.S9 


798 
38 
117 
289 

1,241 
45S 
419 
833 
365 
723 
770 
807 

1,062 
284 

1,525 


$20,975,639 
1,130,110 

2,345,825 
6,368,699 
25,687,220 
13,852,062 
16,073,270 
41,526,424 
9,024,444 
31,771,116 
13,69\4i;:> 

19,083,343 

27,348,141 

7,578,943 

43,069,360 




4,120 


19,657 


1,053 


9,729 


$339,463,065 



TABLE 1G. 
BANK CAPITAL IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE STATES— 1859. 



FREE STATES. 


Capital. 


SLAVE STATES. 


Capital. 








$4,900,000 




$21,951,670 

6,118,000 

4,395,000 

727,000 

7,848,000 

04,519,200 

1,200,000 

180,000 

4,941,000 

7,996,410 

111,884,992 

5,894,846 

25,362,832 

20,814,169 

4,011,500 

7,755,000 








1,756,000 

1 282 300 




District of Columbia, . . . 


Iowa, 


230,000 




Kentucky, 


9,302,400 

14,878 000 






24,496,860 
12,524,122 






New Hampshire, 




800,000 
11,910,406 

6,891,000 
13,588,451 

9,437,500 


New Jersey, 






South Carolina, 


Ohio, 










17,025,300 














$295,599,619 


$124,831,345 



336 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



TABLE 17. 
POST OFFICE OPERATIONS IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLATE STATES— 1859. 



California 
Conn., . . . 
Illinois, . . 
Indiana,. 

Iowa, 

Maine, ... 

Mass 

Michigan, 
N. FT am p., 
N. Jersey, 
N.York,.. 
Ohio, .... 
Penn., . . . 
Rhode Is., 
Vermont, 
■Wisconsin 



Total 
Receipts. 



$283,468 
189,307 
446,536 
208,970 
139,447 
154,528 
607,249 
10S.554 
103,319 
129,068 

1,553,680 
519,999 
661,823 
66,666 
103,218 
180,238 



$6,156,665 



Total 
Expenses. 



$948,661 
202,393 
6S1,625 
379,056 
283,664 
208.8S5 
449,627 
269,443 
110,903 
156,818 

1,107,887 
806,414 
671,532 
47,175 
137,742 
251,648 



Deficiency 



$665,193 

13,086 

235,089 

170,0S6 

144,217 

54,362 



100,S94 
7,5S4 
27,150 



286,415 

9,709 



34,524 
71,410 



$6,723,478 ,$1,819,719 



Alabama, 
Arkansas, 
Delaware, 
Florida, .. 
Georgia,. , 
Kentucky 
Louisiana 
Maryland 
Miss., ... 
Missouri,. 
N. C, ... 
S.C...... 

Tenn.,.. 
Texas,. . . 
Virginia, . 



Total 
Receipts. 



$129,103 

42,532 

28,129 

25,932 

168,665 

151,717 

196,202 

180,258 

101,549 

227,877 

88,491 

107,536 

132,502 

100,597 

255,076 



Total 
Expenses. 



Deficiency. 



$363,629 
320,312 
34,8S3 
171,185 
35s,iso 
365,675 
777,517 
299,767 
870,004 
727,091 
2711,762 
319,068 
:;::4.v!ii 
723,380 
510,801 



$134,526 
277,780 
6,655 
145,253 
189,515 
218,958 
581,315 
119,509 
268,455 
499,214 
182,271 
211,582 
202,318 
622,783 
255,725 



$1,936,166 $5,947,074 $3,910,808 

I I 



t.aj3:l,:e is. 

MILITIA FORCE OF THE FREE AND OF THE SLAVE STATES— 1S59. 



FItKE STATES. 



California, 

Connecticut, 

Illinois, 

Indiana, 

Iowa, 

Maine, 

Massachusetts,.. . 

Michigan, 

Minnesota, 

New Hampshire,. 

New Jersey, 

New York, 

Ohio, 

Pennsylvania,. . . 
Rhode Island, . . . 

Vermont, 

■Wisconsin, 



Militia Force. 



207 

51. 

257. 
53; 



730 
605 
420 
918 



73 
157. 

97. 

23 

33, 

81. 
837, 
279 
350 

16. 

23. 

51, 



,552 
,868 
( 094 
,972 
,533 
,984 
,235 
-ii:t 
,000 
,711 
,915 
321 



2,097,867 



SLAVE STATES. 



Alabama, 

Arkansas, 

Delaware, 

Florida, 

Georgia, 

Kentucky, 

Louisiana, 

Maryland, 

Mississippi, 

Missouri, 

North Carolina,. 
South Carolina,. 

Tennessee, 

Texas, 

Virginia, 



76, 

47, 
9 
12 
78, 
88, 
91, 
46, 

86; 

118. 
79, 
36, 
71, 
19, 

150, 



,662 
750 
,229 
,122 
,699 
979 
824 
864 
084 
047 
448 
072 
252 
766 
000 



962,298 



FKEE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



337 



TABLE 19. 
PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE STATES— 1850. 



FREE STATES. 


Number. 


Teachers. 


Pupils. 


1 

SLAVE STATES. 


Number. 


Teachers. 


Pupils. 


California,.. 
Connecticut, 

Illinois, 

Indiana, . . . 
Iowa, 

Michigan,... 
New Hamp., 
New Jersey, 
New York,.. 
Ohio, 

Rhode Is.,. . 
Vermont,. . . 
Wisconsin,.. 


2 

1,656 

4,052 

4,822 

740 

4,042 

3,679 

2,714 

2,381 

1,473 

11,580 

11,661 

9,061 

416 

2,731 

1,423 


2 

1,7S7 

4,248 

4,860 

828 

5,540 

4,443 

3,231 

3,013 

1,574 

13,965 

12,886 

10,024 

518 

4,173 

1,529 


49 

71,269 

125,725 

161,500 

29,556 

192,815 

176,475 

110,455 

75,643 

77,930 

675,221 

4S4,153 

413,706 

23,130 

93,457 

5S.817 


Alabama,.. 
Arkansas,. 
Delaware, . 
Florida. . . . 
Georgia,... 
Kentucky,. 
Louisiana,. 
Maryland,. 
Mississippi, 
Missouri, . . 
N. Carolina 
S. Carolina 
Tennessee, 

Texas, 

A'irginia,... 


1,152 

353 

194 

69 

1,251 

2,234 

664 

898 

7S2 

1,570 

2,657 

724 

2,680 

349 

2,930 


1,195 
355 
214 
73 

1,265 

2,306 
822 
986 
826 

1,620 

2,730 
739 

2,819 
360 

2,997 


28,380 

8,493 

8,970 

1,878 

32,705 

71,429 

25,046 

33,111 

18,746 

51,754 

104,095 

17,838 

104,117 

7,946 

67,353 




62,433 


72,621 


2,769,901 


1S,507 


19,307 


581,861 



TABLE SO. 



LIBRARIES OTHER THAN PRIVATE IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE 
STATES— 1850. 



FREE STATES. 


Number. 


Volumes. 


SLAVE STATES. 


Number. 


Volumes. 




164 
152 

151 

32 

236 

1,462 

417 

129 

128 

11,013 

352 

393 

96 

96 

72 


165,318 

62,486 

68,403 

5,790 

121,909 

684,015 

107,943 

85,759 

8Q,SS5 

ls760,820 

186,826 

363,400 

104,342 

64,641 

21,020 


Arkansas, 

Georgia, 


56 

3 

17 

7 

88 

80 

10 

124 

117 

97 

38 

26 

84 

12 

54 


20,623 

420 

17,950 




2,668 

31 788 






79,466 
26,800 
125,042 

21,737 
75,056 
29,592 
107,472 
22,896 
4,230 


New Hampshire,. . . 
New Jersey, 


Ohio, 

Pennsylvania, 


North Carolina,.. 
South Carolina,.. 






88,462 










14,911 


3,888,234 


695 649,577 



15 



338 



FEEE FIGUKES AND SLAVE. 



TABLE 31. 



NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS PUBLISHED IN THE FREE AND IN TnE 
SLAVE STATES— 1850. 



FREE STATES. 


Number. 


Copies printed 
annually. 


SLAVE STATES. 


Number. 


Copies printed 
annually. 


Maine, 


7 

46 

107 

107 

29 

49 

202 

58 

3S 

51 

428 

261 

S09 

19 

35 

46 


761,200 
4,267,932 
5,102,276 
4,316,828 
1,512,800 
4,203,064 
64,620,564 
3,247,786 
3,067,552 
4,098,678 
115,385,473 
30,473,407 
84,S9S,672 
2,756,950 
2,567,662 
2,665,487 


N. Carolina 


CO 
9 
10 
10 
51 
62 
55 
68 
50 
61 
51 
46 
50 
34 
87 


2,662,741 

377,000 

421,200 

319,S00 

4,070,S68 

6,582,838 

12,416,224 

19,612,724 

1,752,504 

6,195,560 

2,020,564 

7,145,930 

6,940,750 

1,296,924 

9,223,068 


New Hampshire,.. 

Ohio, 

Pennsylvania, . . . 
Rhode Island, .... 

Vermont, 

Wisconsin, 




1,790 


334,146,2S1 




704 


81,038,693 



TABLE 33. 
ILLITERATE WHITE ADULTS IN TnE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE STATES— 1S50. 



FREE STATES. 


Native. 


Foreign. Total. 


SLAVE STATES. 


Native. 


Foreign. 


Total. 


California, 

Connecticut, . . . 

Massachusetts, . 

Michigan, 

N. Hampshire,. 
New Jersey, . . . 
New York, ... . 

Ohio, 

Pennsylvania,. . 
Rhode Island, . . 

Wisconsin, .... 


2,201 

826 

84,107 

67,275 

7,043 

1,999 

1,055 

4,903 

893 

8,370 

23,241 

51,968 

41,944 

981 

565 

1,459 


2,917 
4,013 
5,947 
3,265 
1,077 
4,148 

26,4S4 
8,009 
2,064 
5,878 

68,052 
9,062 

24,989 
2,859 
5,624 
4,902 


5,118 

4,739 

40,054 

70,540 

8,120 

6,147 

27,539 

7,912 

2,957 

14,248 

91,293 

61,030 

66,928 

8,840 

6,189 

6,36\l 


Arkansas, .... 

Florida, 

Kentucky, 

Louisiana, . . 

Maryland, 

Mississippi, 

N. Carolina, . . 
S. Carolina, . . . 
Tennessee, . . . 
Texas, 


33,61S 

16,792 

4,132 

3,564 

40,794 

64,340 

14,950 

17,364 

18,824 

84,420 

78,226 

15,580 

77.017 

8,037 


139 

27 

404 

295 

406 

2,347 

6,271 

3,451 

81 

1,S61 

840 

104 

505 

2,488 

1,137 


33,757 
16,819 
4,536 
3,859 
41,200 
60,6S7 
21,221 
20,815 
13,405 
86,281 
73,566 
15,684 
77,522 
10,525 
77,005 




248,725 


173,790 422,515 


493,026 


19,856 | 512,882 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



339 



TABLE 23. 



NATIONAL POLITICAL POWER OF THE FREE AND OF THE SLATE 

STATES— 1859. 



free states. Senators. 


Representa- 
tives in low- 
er H.ofC. 


Electoral 
Votes. 


SLAVE STATES. 


[Representa 
Senators, lives in low- 
er H. of C. 


Electoral 
Votes. 


California,.. . 
Connecticut, 

Indiana,. .. . 

Michigan,.... 
Minnesota,. . 
N. Hampshire 
New Jersey, . 
New York,... 

Ohio, 

Oregon, 

Pennsylvania, 
Rhode Island, 
Vermont, . . . 
Wisconsin,... 


2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 


2 
4 
9 

11 
2 
6 

11 
4 
2 
3 
5 

33 

21 
1 

25 
2 

3 
3 


4 

6 

11 

13 

4 

8 

13 

6 

4 

5 

7 

35 

23 

3 

2T 

4 

5 

5 


Alabama, . 
Arkansas,.. 
Delaware,. 
Florida, .. . 
Georgia, . . 
Kentucky,. 
Louisiana,. 
Maryland,. 
Mississippi, 
Missouri,. . 
N. Carolina 
S. Carolina, 
Tennessee, 

Virginia, . . 




2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 


7 
2 
1 
1 
8 

10 
4 
6 
5 
7 
8 
6 

10 
2 

13 


9 

4 
3 
8 

10 

12 
6 
8 
7 
9 

10 
8 

12 
4 

15 




36 


147 


183 




30 


90 


120 



TABLE 24. 

POPULAR VOTE FOR PRESIDENT BY TnE FREE AND BY THE SLAVE 
STATES— 1S56. 



FREE 


Vrp. 


A men 


Dem. 




SLAVE 


Bep. 


A mer. 


Pern. 




STA1 K- 


Fremont. 


Fillmore. 


Buchanan. 




states. 


Frem't 


Fillmore. 


Bucha'n. 




Cal.,.. 


20,339 


85,113 


51,925 


107,377 


Ala.,.. 




28,552 


46,739 


75,291 


Conn., 


42,715 


2,615 


34,995 


80,325 


Ark.,.. 




10,787 


21,910 


82,697 


111., .. 


96,1S9 


87,444 


105,348 


238.9S1 


Del.,... 


30S 


6,175 


8,004 


14,487 


Ind.,.. 


94,375 


22,386 


11S,670 


235,431 


Flor.,.. 




4,833 


6,358 


11,191 


Iowa . 


43,954 


9,180 


36,170 


MI.:;oi 


Geo.,.. 




42,228 


56,578 


98,806 


Maine, 


67,379 


3,325 


39,080 


K'9,7>4 


Ky.,.. 


314 


67,416 


74,642 


142,372 


Mass., 


108,190 


19,626 


39,240 


167,056 


La.,. . . 




20,709 


22,164 


43,873 


Mich., 


71,762 


1,660 


52,136 


125,558 


Md.,... 


281 


47,460 


39,115 


86,856 


N. II., 


38,345 


422 


:;■_'. :-:» 


71.556 


Miss.,.. 




24,195 


35,446 


59,041 


N. J.,.. 


28,333 


24,115 


40,943 


99,396 


Mo., .. 




48,524 


58,164 


106,688 


N. Y.„ 


276,907 


124,604 


195,87S 


597,389 


N. C.,. 




36,8S6 


48,246 


85,132 


Ohio,. 


187,497 


28,126 


170,S74 


386,497 


s. c.,*. 










Penn., 


147,510 


82,175 


230,710 


460,895 


Tenn., 




66,178 


73,638 


139,816 


R.I.,.. 


11,467 


1,675 


6,5S0 


19,7-"2 


Texas, 




15,244 


2S.757 


44,001 


Vt, 


39,561 


545 


10,569 


50,(175 


Va.,... 




60,27S 


89,826 


150,395 


AY is.,.. 


66,090 


579 


5'J,s43 


119,512 














1,340,618 


393,590 


1,224,750 


2,958,958 


1,194 j 479,465 


609,5S7 


1,090,246 



No popular vote. 



340 



FEEE FIGUKES AND SLATE. 



T.AJB;l,E 35. 

VALUE OF CHURCHES IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE STATES— 1850. 



FREE STATES. 


Value. 


SLATE STATES. 


Value. 




$2SS,400 

3,599,330 

1,532,305 

1,568,906 

'235,412 

1,794,209 

10,504,8SS 

793,1 SO 

1,433,2613 

8,712,868 

21,589,561 

5,S60,059 

11,853.291 

1,293,000 

1, 251,055 

512,552 




$1,244,741 
149,6S6 
340,345 
192,600 

1,327,112 
2,295,353 
1,940,495 












Florida, 




Kentucky, 








3,974,116 




1,730,135 






907,785 


Ohio 




2,181,476 
L.246,951 

In- 94 I 


Pennsylvania, 












2,902,220 














$07,773,477 


$21,674,581 



TABLE 3G. 



PATENTS ISSUED ON NEW INVENTIONS IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE 
STATES— 1859. 



FliEE STATES. 



California, 

Connecticut, 

Illinois, 

Indiana, 

Iowa, 

Maine, 

Massachusetts, . . 

Michigan, 

Minnesota, 

New Hampshire, 
New Jersey, .... 

New York, 

Ohio, 

Oregon, 

Pennsylvania, . . 
Rhode Island, . . 

Vermont, . 

'Wisconsin, 



43 

256 

200 

142 

37 

51 

492 

64 

5 

05 

119 

1,237 

890 

1 

532 

65 

63 

71 

4,059 



SLAVE STATES. 



Alabama, 

Arkansas, 

District of Columbia, 

Delaware, 

Florida, 

Georgia, 

Kentucky, 

Louisiana, 

Maryland, 

Mississippi, 

Missouii, 

North Carolina, 

South Carolina, 

Tennessee, 

Texas, 

Virginia, 



26 
5 
58 
12 
4 
53 
41 
51 
116 
25 
63 
26 
15 
31 
29 
65 



625 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



341 



TABLE 37. 

BIBLE CAUSE AND TRACT CAUSE IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE 

STATES— 1S58-1859. 



FREE STATES. 


Contributions 

for the Bible 

Cause, 


Contributions 

for the Tract 

Cause. 


SLAVE STATES. 


i lontriburions 

for the Hible 

Cause. 


Contributions 

for the Tract 

Cause. 


Connecticut, . . . 

Massachusetts, . 
Michigan, 

New Hampshire, 
New Jersey, 

Ohio, 

Pennsylvania,. . 
Rhode Island, . . 


$6,761 

32,735 

51,831 

13,2SS 

6,266 

7,148 

58,047 

12,752 

1,006 

6,242 

29,095 

269,447 

152,602 

1,8411 

48,269 

5,042 

7,701 

5,548 


$1,022 

13,123 

1,100 

500 

350 

1,049 

39,073 

650 

117 

1,735 

4,222 

53,106 

3,132 

435 

3,611 

2,156 

1,395 

113 


Alabama, 

Arkansas, 

Delaware, .... 
District of C.,. 
Florida, 

Kentucky, . . . 
Louisiana, . . . 
Maryland, . . . 
Mississippi,. .. 

Missouri, 

N. Carolina, . . 
S. Carolina, . . 
Tennessee,. .. 

Texas, 

Virginia, .... 


$12,172 

6,426 

1,147 

2,327 

3,736 

ln,7*s 

12,197 

23,046 

17,647 

6,301 

12,531 

7,814 

12,466 

14.337 

6,742 

13,713 


$1,077 

66 

107 

393 

20 

2,S99 

1,129 

2,65S 

14,437 

923 

3,628 

2,274 

2,736 

2,047 

160 

4,549 




$715,620 


$129,590 


$163,390 


$39,103 



TABLE 38. 
MISSIONARY CAUSE IN TnE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE STATES— 1859. 



FREE STATES. 


i Vmtributions 
for Missions 
in general. 


Contributions 
for Home 

Missions. 


SLAVE STATES. 


Contributions 
for Missions 
in general. 


Contributions 
for Home 
Missions. 


California, 

Connecticut, . . . 
Illinois, 


$2S3 

40,755 

5,453 

2,046 

775 

7,569 

113,447 

2,888 

196 

10,210 

5,S93 

75,916 

10,181 

166 

10,212 

8,710 

12,061 

1,362 


$379 
29,406 

3,582 

1,785 

1,150 
11,565 
47,607 

2,016 

428 

10,296 

1,184 
58,331 

6,156 
517 

9,274 

1,964 
10,546 

1,444 


Alabama, 

Arkansas, 

Delaware, 

District of C.,. 

Kentucky, . . . 
Louisiana, . . . 
Maryland, . . . 
Mississippi,. . . 
Missouri, .... 
N. Carolina,.. 
S. Carolina, . . 

Tennessee, 

Texas, 


$130 

549 

705 

101 

2,776 

120 

32 

7S5 

7 

714 

2 

95 

603 

10 

295 


$30 

20 
115 


Massachusetts,.. 
Michigan, 

New Hampshire, 

New York, 

Ohio 

Oregon, 

Pennsylvania,. . 
Rhode Island, . . 
Vermont, 


10 
81 

5 

7 

....„ 




$66S,123 


$197,630 


$6,924 


$270 



342 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



TABLE 39. 
SUNDAY-SCHOOL CAUSE IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE STATES— 1857. 



FREE STATES. 


Total 
Contributions. 


SLAVE STATES. 


Total 
Contributions. 


California, 


$3,568 

1,606 
924 
887 
579 

5,370 
543 
100 
29S 

3,SS0 
29,402 

2,750 

10,180 

760 

117 

211 


Alabama, 

Arkansas,. . . 

Delaware, 

District of Columbia, 

Florida, 

Kentucky, 

Louisiana, 


$812 
31 
101 

51 
16 
751 
1,904 
1,094 
211 


Illinois 

Indiana, 

Iowa, 

Maine, '. 

Michigan, 


Minnesota, 


New Hampshire, 

New Jersey, 


Mississippi, 


190 

1 5*t 


New York, 


North Carolina, 


6 


Ohio, 




807 
1,125 

42 
542 


Pennsylvania, 


Tennessee, 


Vermont, 










$61,175 


$9,207 



TABLE 30. 

RESPECTIVE AGGREGATE RELIEF CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE INDEPENDENT 
ORDER OF ODD FELLOWS, IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE STATES, 
FOR A DECADE OF YEARS ENDING IN 1853. 



fi:ee states. 



Connecticut, 

Illinois, 

Indiana, 

Iowa, 

Maine, 

Massachusetts,. . 

Michigan, 

New Hampshire, 

New Jersey, 

New York, 

Ohio, 

Pennsylvania,.. . 
Rhode Island,. . . 

Vermont, 

Wisconsin, 



Entire Relief 
Contributions. 



9S 
25 
53 
5 
68 

246, 
26. 
34; 

115. 

s is; 
i6s. 
sea: 

30; 



,080 
,391 
,352 
,586 
282 
,884 
,862 
,721 
643 
,499 
423 
195 
171 
669 
246 



$2,305,004 



SLAVE STATES. 



Alabama, 

Arkansas, 

Delaware, 

District of Columbia, 

Florida, 

Georgia, 

Kentucky, 

Louisiana, 

Maryland, 

Mississippi, 

Missouri 

North Carolina, 

Soutb Carolina, 

Tennessee, 

Texas 

Virginia, 



Entire Relief 
Contributions. 



19,685 

14,739 
32,844 

"28,647 
60 Til 
49,287 
277,439 
20,188 
45,146 
10,872 
48,802 
28,068 
2,943 
84,953 

$718,319 



FKEE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



343 



TABLE 31. 
DEATHS IN THE FREE AND IN TnE SLAVE STATES— 1850.* 



FREE STATES. 


Number of 

Heaihs. 


Ratio to the 
Number 
Living. 


SLAVE STATES. 


Number of 
Deaths. 


Ratio to the 

Number 
Living. 




5,781 

11,619 

12,728 

2,044 

7,545 

19,414 

4,520 

4,268 

6,467 

44,339 

28,949 

28,818 

2,241 

3,182 

2,8S4 


64.13 
73.28 
77.65 
94.03 
77.29 
51.23 
88.19 
74.49 
75.70 
69.85 
68.41 
81.63 
65.83 
100.13 
105.82 


Georgia, 

Maryland, 

N. Carolina, 


9,0S4 

2,987 

1,209 

933 

9,H20 

15,206 

11,948 

9,594 

8,711 

12,211 

10,207 

7,997 

11,759 

3,046 

19,053 


84.94 
70.18 
75.71 
93.67 
91.93 
64.60 
42.85 


New Hampshire,.. . 

New York, 

Ohio, 

Pennsylvania, .... 


60.77 
69.93 
55.81 
85.12 
83.59 
85.34 
69.79 
74.61 




1S4,249 | 72.91 


133,865 


71.82 



TABLE 32. 

FREE WHITE MALE PERSONS, OVER FIFTEEN TEARS OF AGE, ENGAGED IN 
AGRICULTURAL AND OTHER OUT-DOOR LABOR IN THE SLAVE STATES— 1S50. 



Alabama, 

Arkansas, 

Delaware, 

Florida, 

Georgia, 

Kentucky, 

Louisiana, 

Maryland, 

Mississippi, 

Missouri, 

North Carolina, 
South Carolina, 

Tennessee, 

Texas, 

Virginia, 



Number engaged 
in Agriculture. 



67,742 
28,436 
6,225 
5,472 
82,107 

110,119 
11,524 
24,672 
50,02S 
64,292 
76,338 
37,612 

115,844 
24,987 
97,654 



803,052 



Number engaged 
in other out-door 
labor. 



7,229 

5,596 

4,184 

2,598 

11,054 

26,30S 

13,827 

17,146 

6,823 

19,900 

21,876 

6,991 

16,795 

22,713 

33,928 



215,968 



74,971 
34,032 
10,409 
8,070 
93,161 

136,427 
25,351 
41,818 
55,851 
84,192 
98,214 
44,603 

132,639 
47,700 

131,582 



1,019,020 



* For an explanation of this table see the next five pages. 



344 FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 

Too hot in the South, and too unhealthy there — white men 
" can't staud it " — negroes only can endure the heat of South- 
ern climes ! How often are our ears insulted with such wick- 
edly false assertions as these ! In what degree of latitude — 
pray tell us — in what degree of latitude do the rays of the 
sun hecome too calorific for white men ? Certainly hi no part 
of the United States, for in the extreme South we find a very 
large number of non-slaveholding whites over the age of fif- 
teen, who derive their entire support from manual labor in 
the open fields. The sun, that brilliant bugbear of pro- 
slavery politicians, shone on more than one million of free 
white laborers — mostly agriculturists — in the Slave States in 
1850, exclusive of those engaged in commerce, trade, manu- 
factures, the mechanic arts, and mining. Yet, notwithstand- 
ing all these instances of exposure to his wrath, we have had 
no intelligence whatever of a single case of coup de soleil. Ala- 
bama is not too hot ; sixty-seven thousand white sons of toil 
till her sdfl. Mississippi is not too hot ; fifty-five thousand 
free white laborers are hopeful devotees of her out-door pur- 
suits. Texas is not too hot ; forty-seven thousand free white 
persons, males, over the age of fifteen, daily perform their 
rural vocations amidst her unsheltered air. 

It is stated on good authority that, in January, 185G, native 
ice, three inches thick, was found in Galveston Bay ; we have 
seen it ten inches thick in North Carolina, with the mercury 
in the thermometer at two degrees below zero. In January, 
1857, while the snow was from three to five feet deep in many 
parts of North Carolina, the thermometer indicated a degree 
of coldness seldom exceeded in any State' in the Union— 
thirteen degrees below zero. The truth is, instead of its 
being too hot in the South for Avhite men, it is too cold for 
negroes ; and we long to see the day arrive when the latter 
shall have entirely receded from their uncongenial homes 



FKEE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 345 

in America, and given full and undivided place to the 
former. 

Too hot in the South for white men ! It is not too hot for 
white women. Time and again, in different counties in North 
Carolina, have we seen the poor white wife of the poor white 
husband, following him in the harvest-field from morning till 
night, binding up the grain as it fell from his cradle. In the 
immediate neighborhood from which we hail, there are not 
less than thirty young women, non-slaveholding whites, be- 
tween the ages of fifteen and twenty-five — some of whom are 
so well known to us that we could call them by name — who 
labor in the fields every summer ; often hiring themselves 
out during harvest-time, the very hottest season of the year, 
to bind wheat and oats — each of them keeping up with the 
reaper ; and this for the paltry consideration of twenty-five 
cents per day. 

That any respectable man — any man with a heart or a soul 
in his composition — can look upon these poor toiling white 
women without feeling indignant at that accursed system of 
slavery which has entailed on them the miseries of poverty, 
ignorance, and degradation, we shall not do ourself the vio- 
lence to believe. If they and their husbands, and their sons 
and daughters, and brothers and sisters, are not righted in 
some of the more important particulars in which they have 
been wronged, the fault shall lie at other doors than our own. 
In their behalf, chiefly, have we written and compiled this 
work ; and until our object shall have been accomplished, or 
until life shall have been extinguished, there shall be no abate- 
ment in our efforts to aid them in regaining the natural and 
inalienable prerogatives out of which they have been so craft- 
ily swindled. We want to see no more ploughing, or hoeing, 
or raking, or grain-binding, by white women in the Southern 
States ; employment in cotton-mills and other factories would 



346 FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 

be far more profitable and congenial to them, and this they 
will have within a short period after slavery shall have been 
abolished. 

Too hot in the South for white men ! What is the testimony 
of reliable Southrons themselves ? Says Cassius M. Clay, of 
Kentucky : 

" In the extreme South, at New Orleans, the laboring men — the 
stevedores and hackmen on the levee, where the heat is intensified 
by the proximity of the red brick buildings, are all white men, and 
they are in the full enjoyment of health. But how about cotton ? I 
am informed by a friend of mine — himself a slaveholder, and there- 
fore good authority — that in northwestern Texas, among the German 
settlements, who, true to their national instincts, will not employ the 
labor of a slave — they produce more cotton to the acre, and of a bet- 
ter quality, and selling at prices from a cent to a cent and a half a 
pound higher than that produced by slave labor." 

Says Gov. Hammond of South Carolina : 

" The steady heat of our summers is not so prostrating as the short, 
but frequent and sudden, bursts of Northern summers." 

In an extract, which may be found in our second chapter, 
and to which we respectfully refer the reader, it will be seen 
that this same South Carolinian, speaking of " not less than 
fifty thousand " non-slaveholding whites, says — " Most of these 
now follow agricultural pursuits." 

Says Dr. Cartwright, of New Orleans : 

" Here in New Orleans, the larger part of the drudgery— work re- 
quiring exposure to the sun, as railroad-making, street-paving, dray- 
driving, ditching, and building, is performed by white people." 

To the statistical tables which show "the number of deaths 
in the Free and in the Slave States in 1850, we would direct 
special attention. Those persons, particularly the propagan- 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 347 

dists of negro slavery, who, heretofore, have been so dread- 
fully exercised on account of what they have been pleased to 
term " the insalubrity of Southern climes," will there find 
something to allay their fearful apprehensions. A critical 
examination of said tables will disclose the fact that, in pro- 
portion to population, deaths occur more frequently in Mas- 
sachusetts than in any Southern State except Louisiana; 
more frequently in New York than in any of the Southern 
States, except Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, and 
Texas ; more frequently in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, and 
in Ohio, than in either Georgia, Florida, or Alabama. Leav- 
ing Wisconsin and Louisiana out of the account, and then 
comparing the bills of mortality in the remaining Northern 
States, with those in the remaining Southern States, we find 
the difference decidedly in favor of the latter ; for, according 
to this calculation, while the ratio of deaths is as only one to 
74.G0 of the living population in the Southern States, it is as 
one to 72.39 in the Northern. 
Says Dr. J. C. Nott, of Mobile: 

"Heat, moisture, animal and vegetable matter, are said to be tbe 
elements which produce the diseases of the South, and yet the testi- 
mony in proof of the health of the banks of the lower portion of the 
Mississippi Eiver is too strong to be doubted — not only the river 
itself, but also the numerous bayous which meander through Louisi- 
ana, Here is a perfectly flat alluvial country, covering several 
hundred miles, interspersed with interminable lakes, lagunes and 
jungles, and still we are informed by Dr. Cartwright, one of the 
most acute observers of the day, that this country is exempt from 
miasmatic disorders, and is extremely healthy. His assertion has 
been confirmed to me by hundreds of witnesses, and we know from 
our own observation, that the population present a robust and 
healthy appearance." 

But the best part is yet to come, In spite of all the blatant 



348 FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 

assertions of the oligarchy, that the climate of the South was 
arranged expressly for the negroes, and that the negroes were 
created expressly to inhabit it as the healthful servitors of 
other men, a carefully kept register of all the deaths that 
occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, for the space of six 
years, shows that, even in that locality which is generally 
regarded as so unhealthy, the annual mortality was much 
greater among the blacks, in proportion to population, than 
among the whites. Dr. Nott himself shall state the facts. 
He says: 

" The average mortality for the last six years in Charleston for 
all ages is 1 in 51, including all classes. Blacks alone 1 in 44 ; 
whites alone, 1 in 58 — a very remarkable result, certainly. This 
mortality is perhaps not an unfair test, as the population during the 
hast six years has heen undisturhed hy emigration, and acclimated 
in a greater proportion than at any former period." 

Numerous other authorities might be cited in proof of the 
general healthiness of the climate South of Mason and 
Dixon's line. Of 127 remarkable cases of American longe- 
vity, published in a recent edition of Blake's Biographical 
Dictionary, 68 deceased centenarians are credited to the 
Southern States, and 59 to the Northern — the list being 
headed with Betsey Trantham, of Tennessee — a white woman 
who died in 1834, at the extraordinarily advanced age of 
154 years. 



FEEE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



349 



TABLE 33. 

NATIVES OF THE SLAVE STATES IN THE FREE STATES, AND NATIVES OF 

THE FREE STATES IN THE SLAVE STATES— -1S50.* 



FREE STATES. 


Natives of il it- 
Slave Stales. 


SLAVE ST.-.T::S. 


Natives of Ihe 
Free States. 


California, 


24,055 

1,390 

144,809 

176,581 

31,392 

45S 

2,980 

3,634 

215 

4,110 

12,629 

152,319 

47,180 

9S2 

140 

6,353 




4,947 
7,965 




6,996 
1,718 
4,249 
31,340 
14,567 
23,815 






Ohio, 




4,517 
55,664 




2,167 

2,4-27 
6,571 






9,9S2 






28,999 










609,223 


205,921 



TABLE 34. 
VALUE OF THE SLAVES AT $400 PER HEAD— 1S50.+ 



STATES. 


Value of the Slaves at $400 
per head. 


Value of Real and Personal 
ICstate, less i he value of 
slaves at $100 per head. 




$137,137,000 

18,840,000 

916,000 

15,724,000 

152,672,800 
84,392,400 
97,923,600 
36,147,200 

123,951,200 
34,968,800 

115,419,200 

153,993,600 
95,783,600 
23,264,41)0 

189,011,200 


$81,066,732 




21,001,025 
17,939.8ft) 




7,474,734 
182,752,914 




217-,236,056 

136,075,164 
1S3,070,164 
105,000.000 
102,278,907 
111,381,272 




131,264.094 




111,671,104 




32,097,940 
202,034,638 




$1,2S0,145,600 


$1,655,945,137 



* This table, compiled from the 116th page of the Compendium of the Seventh Census, 
shows, in a most lucid and startling manner, how negroes, slavery and slaveholders are 
driving the native non-slaveholding whites away from their homes, and keeping at a dis- 
tance other decent people. From the South the tide of emigration still Hows in a westerly 
artd northwesterly direction, and so it will continue to do until slavery is abolished. 

+ It is intended that this table shall be considered in connection with table No. 10. 



350 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



To Dr. G. Bailey, late editor of the " National Era," Wash- 
ington City, D. C, we are indebted for the following useful 
and interesting statistics, to which some of our readers will 
doubtless have frequent occasion to refer : 

PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



March 4, 1789 j. George Washington, Virg. 



March 4, 1797 J John Adamg) Magg 
March 4, 1S01 i Thomas j e fferson, Virg. 

Marcli 4.' 1809 I T , r ,. •„. 

" o -1017 f James Madison, Virg. 

Ma " ch 3; 1825 [ James Monroe - Tir s- 
March 4, 1S25 | T , „ , . ,. 

" 3 1S'?9 I ^ onn Q- Adams, Mass. 
March 4.' 1S29 ( . . T , _ 

" 3 1S ,:> 7 f Ancn ' ew Jackson, Tenn. 



Ma » Ch t] mi } Martin Van Buren, N. Y. 

March 4, 1S41 j ixr.,.. __ „ TT . _.. 
11 g jg^g J- William II. Harrison, Ohio. 

March 4, 1845 ) T . „„ „ ., „ _, 

ii g' jg^g {• James K. Polk, Tenn. 

March 4, 1849 I ^ . „, , T . 
11 3 jggg >za.chary Taylor, Louis. 

March 4, 1853 (' , ,. _. „ _ 

11 g' jg 5 7 !■ Franklin Pierce, N. H. 

March 4, 1857 ) T „ m _ , n 

11 g 1861 f James Buchanan, Penn. 



At the close of the term for which Mr. Buchanan is elected, it 
will have been seventy-two years since the organization of the pre- 
sent government. 

In that period, there have been eighteen elections for President, 
the candidates chosen in twelve of them being Southern men and 
slaveholders, in six of them Northern men and non-slaveholders. 

No Northern man has ever been reelected, but five Southern men 
have been thus honored. 

Gen. Harrison, of Ohio, died one month after his inauguration. 
Gen. Taylor, of Louisiana, about four months after his inauguration. 
In the former case, John Tyler, of Virginia, became acting President, 
in the latter, Millard Fillmore, of New York. 

Of the seventy-two years, closing with Mr. Buchanan's term 
should he live it out, Southern men and slaveholders liave occupied 
the Presidential chair forty-eight years and three months, or a little 
more than two-thirds of the time. 



THE SUPREME COURT. 



The judicial districts are organized so as to give five judges to the 
Slave States, and four to the Free, although the population, wealth 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



351 



and business of the latter are far in advance of those of the former. 
The arrangement affords, however, an excuse for constituting the 
Supreme Court, with a majority of judges from the slaveholding 

States. 



MEMBERS. 



Chief Justice — R. B. Taney, Maryland. 
Associate Justice — J. M. Wayne, Georgia. 

" " John Catron, Tenn. 

" " P. V. Daniel, Virginia. 

" " John A. Campbell, Ala. 

" " John McLean, Ohio. 



Associate Justice — S. Nelson, New York. 

" " R. C. (irier, Pa. 

" " Nathan Clifford, Me. 

Reporter, B. C. Iloward, Maryland. 
Clerk, W. T. Carroll, D. C. 



SECRETARIES OF STATE. 



The highest office in the Cabinet is that of Secretary of State, who 
has under his charge the foreign relations of the country. Since the 
year 1789, there have been twenty -three appointments to the office — 
fourteen from Slave States, nine from Free. Or, counting by years, 
the post has been filled by Southern men and slaveholders very 
nearly forty years out of sixty-nine, as follows : 



Appointed. 
Sept. 2G, 1TS9, 
Jan. 2, 1794, 
Dec. 10, 1795, 
May 13, 1S00, 
March 5, 1801, 
March 6, 1S09, 
April 2, 1811, 
Feb. 28, 1S15, 
March 5, 1S15, 
March 7, 1S25, 
March 6, 1S29, 
May 24, 1831, 



Thomas Jefferson, Virginia 
E. Randolph, Virginia. 
T. Pickering, Mass. 
J. Marshall, Virginia. 
James Madison, Virginia. 
R. Smith, Maryland. 
James Monroe, Virginia. 

J. Q. Adams, Mass. 
Henry Clay, Kentucky. 
Martin Van Buren, N. Y. 
E. Livingston, Louisiana. 



Appointed. 
May 29, 1S33, 
June 27, 1834, 
March 5, 1841, 
July 24, 1S43, 
March 6, 1844, 
March 5, 1845, 
March 7, 1849, 
July 20, 1850, 
Dec. 9, 1851, 
March 5, 1853, 
March 6, 1857, 



Louis McClane, Delaware. 
J. Forsyth, Georgia. 
Daniel Webster, Mass. 
A. P. Upshur, Virginia. 
J. C. Calhoun, S. C. 
James Buchanan, Pa. 
J. M. Clayton, Delaware. 
Daniel Webster, Mass. 
E. Everett, Mass. 
W. L. Marcy, N. Y. 
Lewis Cass, Michigan. 



PRESIDENTS TEO TEM. OF THE SENATE. 



Since the year 1809, every President pro tern, of the Senate of the 
United States has been a Southern man and slaveholder, with the 
exception of Samuel L. Southard, of New Jersey, who held the office 
for a very short time, and Mr. Bright, of Indiana, who has held it 
for one or two sessions, we believe, having been elected, however, 
as a known adherent of the slave interest, believed to be interested 
in slave "property." 



352 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 



April, 1TS9 
March 3, 1791 
Oct. 24, 1791 
March 2, 1793 
Dec. 2, 1793 
March 3, 1795 
Dec. 7, 1795 
March 3, 1797 
May 15, 1797 
March 3, 1799 
Dec. 2, 1799 
Masch 3, 1801 
Dec. 7, 1801 
March 3, 1807 
Oct. 26, 1807 
March 8, 1S11 
March 4, 1811 
Jan. 19, 1814 
Jan. 19, 1814 
March 2, 1S15 
Dec. 4, 1815 
Nov. 13, 1820 
Nov. 15, 1820 
March 3, 1821 
Dec. 3, 1821 
March 3, 1823 
Dec. 1, 1823 
March 8, 1S25 
Dec. 5, 1825 
March 3, 1827 



i F. A. Muhlenberg, Pa. 
j-J. Trumbull, Con. 
It. A. Muhlenberg, Pa. 
[■Jonathan Dayton, N. J. 

{■Theodore Sedgwick, Mass. 
[•Nathaniel Macon, N. C. 
{ J. B. Varnum, Mass. 
[•Henry Clay, Kentucky. 
{ Langdon Cheves, S. C. 
\ Henry Clay, Kentucky. 

J. W. Taylor, New York. 

P. B. Barbour, Virginia. 

Henry Clay, Kentucky. 

J. W. Taylor, N. Y. 



Dec. 3, 1827 
June 2, 1884 
June 2. 1884 
March 3, 1S35 
Dec. 7, 1835 
March 3, 1S39 
Dec. 16, 1S89 
March 3, IS 11 
May 31, 1S41 
March 8, 1S43 
Dec. 4, 1S43 
March 3, 1S45 
Dec. 1, 1S45 
March 3, 1S47 
Dec. 6, 1847 
March 3, 1849 
Dec. 22, 1S49 
March 3, 1851 
Dec. 1, 1S51 
March 3, 1S53 
Dec. 1, 1853 
March 3, 1S55 
Feb. 28, 1S56 
March 3, 1S57 
Dec. 7, 1857 
March 3, 1S59 
Feb. 1, 1S60 
March 3, 1S61 



{■A. Stevenson, Virginia. 
[■John Bell, Tenn. 
[-James K. Polk, Tenn. 
j- R. M. T. Hunter, Virginia. 
[John White, Tenn. 
>J. W. Jones, Virginia. 
V J. W. Davis, Indiana. 
{• R. C. Winthrop, Mass. 
j-nowell Cobb, Georgia. 
[Linn Boyd, Kentucky. 

} " " " 

{■ Nathaniel P. Banks, Mass. 

j- James L. Orr, S. C. 

[• William Pennington, N. J. 



POSTMASTERS-GENERAL. 



Appointed — 
Sept. 26, 1789, S. Osgood, Mass. 
Aug. 12, 1791, T. Pickering, Mass. 
Feb. 25, 1795, J. Habersham, Georgia. 
Nov. 28, 1801, G. Granger, Conn. 
March 17, 1814, R. J. Meigs, Ohio. 
June 25, 1S23, John McLean, Ohio. 
March 9, 1829, W. T. Barry, Ky. 
May 1, 1S35, A. Kendall, Ky. 
May IS, 1S40, J. M. Niles, Conn. 



Appointed — 
March 6,1841, 
Sept. 18, 1841, 
March 5, 1845, 
March 7, 1849, 
July 20, 1850, 
Aug. 81, 1852, 
March 5, 1S58, 
March 6, 1S57, 



F. Granger, N. Y. 
C. A. Wickliffe, Ky. 

C. Johnson, Tenn. 

J. Collamer, Vt, 

N. K. Hall, N. Y. 

S. D. Hubbard, Conn. 

J. Campbell, Pa. 

Aaron V. Brown, Tenn. 



Sectionalism does not seem to have had much to do with this de- 
partment or with that of the interior, created in 1848-49. 

SECRETARIES OF THE INTERIOR. 



Appointed — 
March 7, 1849, T. Ewing, Ohio. 
July 20, 1850, J. A. Pearce, Maryland. 
Aug. 15, 1S50, T. M. T. McKennon, Pa. 



Appointed — 
Sept. 12, 1850, A. II. II. Stuart, Virginia. 
March 5, is:,:!, ]{. McClelland, Michigan. 
March 0, 1S57, Jacob Thompson, Miss. 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



353 



ATTORNEYS-GENERAL. 



Appointed- 
Sept. 26, 1789, 
June 27, 1794, 
Dec. 10, 1795, 
Feb. 20, 1800, 
March 5, 1S01, 
March 2, 1805, 
Dec. 23, 1S05, 
Jan. 20, 1S07, 
Dec. 11, 1811, 
Feb. 10, 1814, 
Nov. 13, 1S17, 
March 9, 1829, 
July 20,1831, 



E. Randolph, Virginia. 

W. Bradford, I'a. 

C. Lee, Virginia. 

T. Parsons, Mass. 

L. Lincoln, Mass. 

K. Smith, Maryland. 

J. Breckinridge, Ky. 

C. A. Rodney, Pa. 

W. Pinkney, Maryland. 

R. Rush, Pennsylvania. 

W. Wirt, Virginia. 

J. McPherson Berrien, Ga. 

Roger B. Taney, Maryland. 



Appointed — 
Nov. 15, 1833, 
July 7, 1838, 
Jan. 10, 1S40, 
March 5, 1841, 
Sept. 13, 1841, 
July 1, 1843, 
March 5, 1S45, 
Oct. 17, 1846, 
June-21, 184S, 
MarcTi 7, 1849, 
July 20, 1850, 
March 5, 1853, 
March 6, 1S57, 



B. F. Butler, New York. 
F. Grundy, Tennessee. 
II. D. Gilpin, Pa. 

J. J. Crittenden, Ky. 
H. S. Legare, S. C. 
John Nelson, Maryland. 
J. Y. Mason, Va. 
N. Clifford, Maine. 
Isaac Toucey, Conn. 
R. Johnson, Maryland. 
J. J. Crittenden, Ky. 

C. Cushing, Mass. 
Jeremiah S. Black, Pa. 



SECRETARIES OF THE TREASURY. 



The post of Secretary of the Treasury, although one of great im- 
portance, requires financial abilities of a high order, which are more 
frequently found in the North than in the South, and affords little 
opportunity for influencing general politics, or the questions spring- 
ing out of slavery. "We need not, therefore, be surprised to learn that 
Northern men have been allowed to discharge its duties some forty- 
eight years out of sixty-nine, as follows : 



Appointed — 
Sept. 11,1789, 
Feb. 8, 1795, 
31, 1S0O, 
14, 1801, 
9, 1814, 
6, 1814, 
22, 1816, 
March 7, 1825, 
March 6, 1829, 
Aug. 8, 1831, 
May 29, 1833, 



Dec. 
May 
Feb. 
Oct. 
Oct. 



A. Hamilton, N. Y. 

0. Wolcott, Conn. 

S. Dexter, Mass. 

A. Gallatin, Penn. 

G. W. Campbell, Tenn. 

A. J. Dallas, Penn. 

W. H. Crawford, Ga. 

R. Rush, Penn. 

S. D. Ingham, Penn. 

L. McLane, Delaware. 

W. J. Duane, Penn. 



Appointed — 
Sept. 23, 1S33, 
June 27, 1S34, 
March 5, 1841, 
Sept. 13, 1841, 
March 3, 1843, 
June 15, 1844, 
March 5, 1S45, 
March 7, 1S49, 
June 20, 1850, 
March 5, 1858, 
March 6, 1S57, 



Roger B. Taney, Md. 
L. Woodbury, N. H. 
Thomas Ewing, Ohio. 
W. Forward, Penn. 
J. C. Spencer, N. Y. 
G. M. Bibb, Ky. 
R. J. Walker, Miss. 
W. M. Meredith, Penn. 
Thomas Corwin, Ohio. 
James Guthrie, Ky. 
Howell Cobb, Ga. 



SECRETARIES OF WAR AND THE NAVY. 



The slaveholders, since March 8th, 1841, a period of nearly eight- 
een years, have taken almost exclusive supervision of the navy, 
Northern men having occupied the Secretaryship only six years. 
Nor has any Northern man been Secretary of "War since 1849. Con- 
sidering that nearly all the shipping belongs to the Free States, which 
also supply the seamen, it does seem remarkable that slaveholders 



354 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



should have monopolized for the last eighteen years the control of 
the navy. 



SECRETARIES OF WAR. 



Jan. 
May 
May 

Feb. 



Appointed- 
Sept. 12, 17S9, 
Jan. 2, 1795, 

27, 179G, 
7, 1800, 

13, 1800, 
3, 1801, 
March 5, 1801, 
March 7, 1S02, 
Jan. 13, 1S13, 
Sept. 27, 1814, 
March 3, 1S15, 
March 5, 1817, 
April 7, 1817, 
Oct. 8, 1S17, 
March 7, 1825, 
May 26,1828, 



Henry Knox, Mass. 
T. Pickering, Mass. 
J. McIIenry, Md. 
J. Marshall, Va. 
S. Dexter, Mass. 
R. Griswold, Conn. 
II. Dearborn, Mass. 
W. Eustis, Mass. 
J. Armstrong, N. Y. 
James Monroe, Va. 
W. 11 Crawford, Ga. 
J. Shelby, Ky. 
G. Graham, Va. 
J. C. Calhoun, S. C. 
J. Barbour, Va. 
P. B. Porter, Penn. 



Appointed — 
March 9, 1829, 
Aug. 1, 1831, 
March 8, 1837, 
March 7, 1837, 
March 5, 1841, 
Sept. 13, 1S41, 
Oct. 12, 1S41, 
March 8, 1843, 
Feb. 15, 1S44, 
March 5, 1845, 
March 7, 1849, 
July 20, 1850, 
Aug. 15, 1850, 
March 5, 185S, 
March 6, 1S57, 



J. H. Eaton, Tenn. 
Lewis Cass, Ohio. 

B. F. Butler, N. Y. 
J. R. Poinsett, S. C. 
James Bell, Tenn. 
John McLean, Ohio. 
J. C. Spencer, N. Y. 
J. W. Porter, Penn. 
W. Wilkins, Penn. 
William L. Marcy, N. 
G. W. Crawford, Ga. 
E. Bates, Mo. 

C. M. Conrad, La. 
Jefferson Davis, Miss. 
John B. Floyd, Va. 



SECRETARIES OF THE NAVY, 



Appointed — 
May 8, 179S, 
May 21, 1798, 
July 15, 1S01, 
May 8, 1805, 
March 7, 1809, 
Jan. 12, 1813, 
Dec. 17, 1814, 
Nov. 9, ISIS, 
Sept. 1, 1823, 
Sept. 16, 1823, 
March 9, 1829, 
May 23,1831, 
June 30, 1S34, 



G. Cabot, Mass. 

B. Stoddart, Mass. 

R. Smith, Md. 

J. Crowninshield, Mass. 

P. Hamilton, S. C. 

W. Jones, Penn. 

B. W. Crowninshield, Mass. 

Smith Thompson, N. Y. 

John Rogers, Mass. 

S. L. Southard, N. J. 

John Branch, N. C. 

L. Woodbury, N. H. 

M. Dickerson, N. J. 



Appointed — 
June 20, 1838, 
March 5, 1S41, 
Sept. 13,1841, 
July 24,1843, 
Feb, 12, 1S44, 
March 14, 1844, 
March 10, 1845, 
Sept. 9, 1846, 
March 7, 1849, 
July 20, 1S50, 
July 22, 1S52, 
March 8, 1853, 
March 6, 1857, 



J. K. Paulding, N. Y. 
G. F. Badger, N. C. 
A. P. Upshur, Va. 
D. Henshaw, Mass. 
T. W. Gilmer, Va. 
James Y. Mason, Va. 
G. Bancroft, Mass. 
James Y. Mason, Va. 
W. B. Preston, Va. 
W. A. Graham, N. C. 
J. P. Kennedy, Md. 
J. C. Dobbin, N. C. 
Isaac Toucey, Conn. 



RECAPITULATION. 



Presidency. — Southern men and slaveholders, 48 years 3 months ; 
Northern men, 23 years 9 months. 

Pro Tern. Presidency of the Senate. — Since 1809 held by Southern 
men and slaveholders, except for three or four sessions by Northern 
men. 

Speakership of the House. — Filled by Southern men and slaveholders 
forty-five years, Northern men twenty -five. 

Supreme Court. — A majority of the Judges, including Chief-Justice, 
Southern men and slaveholders. 



FEEE FIGUEES AND SLAVE. 355 

Secretaryship of State. — Filled by Southern men and slaveholders 
forty years; Northern, twenty -nine. 

Attorney- Generalship. — Filled by Southern men and slaveholders 
forty-twx> years ; Northern men, twenty-seven. 

War and Navy. — Secretaryship of the Navy, Southern men and 
slaveholders, the last eighteen years, with an interval of six years. 

WILLIAM HENRY HUELBTJT, 

Of South Carolina, a gentleman of enviable literary attain- 
ments, and one from whom we may expect a continuation of 
good service in the eminently holy crusade now going on 
against slavery and the devil, furnished not long since to the 
" Edinburgh Review," in the course of a long and highly- 
interesting article, the following summary of oligar"chal usur- 
pations — showing that slaveholders have occupied the princi- 
pal posts of the government nearly two-thirds' of the time : 

Presidents It out of lfi 

Judges of the Supreme Court 17 out of 28 

Attorneys-General • 14 out of 19 

Presidents of the Senate 61 out of 77 

Speakers of the House 21 out of 83 

Foreign Ministers 80 out of 134 

As a matter of general interest, and as showing that, while 
there have been but eleven non-slaveholders directly before 
the people as candidates for the Presidency, there have been 
at least sixteen slaveholders who were willing to serve their 
country in the capacity of chief magistrate, the following 
table may be here introduced : 



356 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



RESULT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN THE UNITED 
STATES FROM 1796 TO 1850. 



Year. 

1790 \ 



1S00 1 
1804] 

isosj 

1812 -j 
1816 1 
1820 1 

f 
1824-j 

I 
1S2S-! 



Name of Candidate. Elect'l 

Johu Adams 

Thomas Jefferson 

Thomas Jefferson 

John Adams 

Thomas Jefferson 

Charles C. Pinckney 

James Madison 

Charles C. Pinckney 

James Madison * 

De Witt Clinton 

James Monroe 

Rufus King 

James Monroe 

No opposition but one vote. 

Andrew Jackson* 

John Q. Adams 

W. II. Crawford 

Henry Clay 

Andrew Jackson 

John Q. Adams 



vote. 
71 
68 
73 
64 

162 
14 

128 
45 

122 
89 

183 
34 

218 



84 
41 
37 

83 



Year. 

1S32J 

1SS6-! 

1840 1 
1844 j 
1848 ] 
1S52 

1S56-J 



Name of Candidate. 

Andrew Jackson 

Henry Clay 

John Floyd 

William Wirt 

Martin Van Buren 

William H. Harrison. . . 

HughL. White 

Willie P. Mangum 

Daniel Webster 

William H. Harrison... 

Martin Van Buren 

James K. Polk 

Henry Clay 

Zachary Taylor 

Lewis Cass 

Franklin Pierce 

General Winfield Scott. 

James Buchanan 

John C. Fremont 

Millard Fillmore 



%ct'I 



vote. 

219 

49 

11 

7 

170 

73 

26 

11 

14 

234 

60 

170 

105 

163 

127 

254 

42 

174 

114 



AID FOR KANSAS. 

As a sort of accompaniment to many of the preceding 
tables, we will here introduce a few items which will more 
fully illustrate the liberality of Freedom and the niggardliness 
of Slavery. 

From an editorial article that appeared in the " Richmond 
(Va.) Dispatch," in July, 1856, bewailing the close-fistedness 
of slavery, we make the following extract : 

" Gerrit Smith, the Abolitionist, has just pledged himself to give 
$1,500 a month for the next twelve months to aid in establishing 
freedom in Kansas. He gave, but a short time since, at the Kansas 
relief meeting in Albany, $3,000. Prior to that he had sent about 
$1,000 to the Boston Emigrant Committee. Out of his own funds, 
he subsequently equipped a Madison County company of one hun- 
dred picked men, and paid their expenses to Kansas. At Syracuse 
he subscribed $10,000 for Abolition purposes, so that his entire con- 
tributions amount to at least $40,000." 



* No choice by the people, 
sentatives. 



Johu Q. A dams elected by the House of Repre- 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 357 

Under date of August 9, 1856, an Eastern paper informs 
us that 



"The sum of $500 was contributed at u meeting at New Bedford 
on Monday evening, to make Kansas free. The following sums have 
been contributed for the same purpose : $2,000 in Taunton; $600 in 
Raynham ; $800 in Clinton ; $300 in Danbury, Ct. In Wisconsin, 
$2,500 at Janesville ; $500 at Dalton ; $500 at the "Women's Aid 
Meeting in Chicago ; $2,000 in Rockford, 111." 

A telegraphic dispatch, dated Boston, January 2, 1857, 

says : 

"The Secretary of the Kansas Aid Committee acknowledges the 
receipt of $42,678." 

Exclusive of the amounts above, the readers of the " New 
York Tribune " contributed at least $30,000 for the purpose 
of securing Kansas to Freedom; and with the same object in 
view, other individuals and societies, as occasion required, 
made large contributions, of which we failed to keep a memo- 
randum. The Legislature of Vermont appropriated $20,000 ; 
and other Free State legislatures were prepared to appropri- 
ate millions, if necessary. Free men had determined that 
Kansas should be free, and free it is, and will ever so remain. 
All honor to the immortal patriots who saved her from the 
death-grasp of Slavery ! 

Now let us see how Slavery rewarded the poor, ignorant 
deluded, and degraded mortals — swaggering lickspittles — 
who labored so hard to gain for it a " local habitation and a 
name " in the disputed territory. One D. B. Atchison, chair- 
man of the Executive Committee of Border Ruffians, shall 
tell us all about it. Over date of October K?th, 1856, he 
says : 

"Up to this moment, from all the States except Missouri, we have 



358 FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 

only received the following sums, and through the following per- 
sons; 

A. W. Jones, Houston, Miss $152 

H. D. Clayton, Eufala, Ala ....500 

Capt. Deediick, South Carolina 500 

$1,152 

On this subject, further comment is unnecessary. 

Numerous other contrasts, equally disproportionate, might 
be drawn between the vigor and munificence of Freedom and 
the impotence and stinginess of Slavery. We will, however, 
in addition to the above, advert to only a single instance. 
During the latter part of the siunmer of 1855, the citizens of 
the despicable little slave-towns of Norfolk and Portsmouth 
in Virginia, were sorely plagued with yellow fever. Many 
of them fell victims to the disease, and most of those Avho sur- 
vived, and who were not too unwell to travel, left their homes 
horror-stricken and dejected. To the honor of mankind in 
general, and to the glory of freemen in particular, contribu- 
tions in money, provisions, clothing, and other valuable sup- 
plies, poured in from all parts of the country for the relief of 
the sufferers. Portsmouth alone, according to the report of 
her relief association, received $42,547 in cash from the Free 
States, and only $12,182 in cash from all the Slave States, 
exclusive of Virginia, within whose borders the malady pre- 
vailed. Including Virginia, the sum total of all the Slave 
State contributions amounted to only |33,398. Well did the 
" Richmond Examiner " remark at the time — " we fear that 
generosity of Virginians is but a figure of speech." Slavery 
thy name is shame ! 

The following statistics of Congressional representation, 
which we transcribe from " Reynolds' Political Map of the 
United States," published in 1856, deserve to be carefully 
studied : 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 359 



UNITED STATES SENATE. 

Sixteen Free States, with a white population of 13,238,670, have 
thirty-two Senators. 

Fifteen Slave States, with a white population of 6,186,477, have 
thirty Senators. 

So that 413,708 free men of the North enjoy hut the same political 
privileges in the United States Senate as is given to 206,215 slave 
propagandists. 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

The Free States have a total of 144 memhers. 

The Slave States have a total of 90 memhers. 

One Free State Representative represents 91,935 white men and 
women. 

One Slave State Representative represents 68,725 white men and 
women. 

Slave Representation gives to slavery an advantage over freedom 
of thirty votes in the House of Representatives. 

CUSTOM HOUSE RECEIPTS — 1854. 

Free States $60,010,4^9 

Slave States 5,136,969 

Balance in favor of the Free States $54,873,520 

A contrast quite distinguishable ! 

That the apologists of slavery cannot excuse the shame and 
the shabbiness of themselves and their country, as we have 
frequently heard them attempt to do, by falsely asserting 
that the North has enjoyed over the South the advantages 
of priority of settlement, will fully appear from the following 
table : 



360 



FKEE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 



FREE STATES. 
1614 New York first settled by the Dutch. 
1620 Mass. settled by the Puritans. 

1623 N. H. settled by the Puritans. 

1624 New Jersey settled by the Dutch. 

1635 Conn, settled by the Puritans. 

1636 R. I. settled by Roger Williams. 
1682 Pa. settled by William Penn. 
1791 Vt. admitted into the Union. 
1802 Ohio admitted into the Union. 
1S16 Indiana admitted into the Union. 
1818 Illinois admitted into the Union. 
1820 Maine admitted into the Union. 
1836 Michigan admitted into the Union. 
1546 Iowa admitted into the Union. 
1848 Wisconsin admitted into the Union. 
1850 California admitted into the Union. 

1858 Minnesota admitted into the Union. 

1859 Oregon admitted into the Union. 



SLATE STATES. 

1607 Virginia first settled by the English. 
1627 Del. settled by the Swedes and Fins. 
1635 Md. settled by the Irish Catholics. 
1650 N. C. settled by the English. 
1670 S. C. settled by the Huguenots. 
1733 Ga. settled by Gen. Oglethorpe. 
17S2 Ky. admitted into the Union. 
1796 Tenn. admitted into the Union. 
1S11 La. admitted into the Union. 
1817 Miss, admitted into the Union. 
1819 Alabama admitted into the Union. 
1821 Missouri admitted into the Union. 
1S30 Arkansas admitted into the Union. 
1845 Florida admitted into the Union. 
1S46 Texas admitted into the Union. 



In the course of an exceedingly interesting article on the 
early settlements in America, II. K. Browne, formerly editor 
and proprietor of the San Francisco "Evening Journal," 
says : 

" Many people seem to think that the Pilgrim Fathers were the 
first who settled upon our shores, and therefore that they ought to 
be entitled, in a particular manner, to our remembrance and esteem. 

" This is not the case, and we herewith present to our readers a 
list of settlements made in the present United States, prior to that 
of Plymouth : 

1564. A Colony of French Protestants under Eibault, -settled in 
Florida. 

1565. St. Augustine* founded by Pedro Melendez. 

1584. Sir Walter Paleigh obtains a patent and sends two vessels to 
the American coast, which receives the name of Virginia. 

1607. The first effectual settlement made at Jamestown, Va., by 
the London Company. 

1614. A fort erected by the Dutch upon the site of New York. 

1615. Fort Orange built near the site of Albany, 1ST. Y. 

1619. The first General Assembly called in Virginia* 

1620. The Pilgrims land on Plymouth rock." 



* The oldest town in the United States. 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 361 

FREEDOM AND SLAVERY AT THE FAIR. 
WHAT FREEDOM DID. 

At an Agricultural Fair held at Watertown, in the State 
of New York, on the 2d day of October, 1856, two hundred 
and twenty premiums, ranging from three to fifty dollars 
each, were awarded to successful competitors — the aggregate 
amount of said premiums being $2,396, or an average of 
$10 89 each. From the pi-oceedings of the Awarding Com- 
mittee we make the following extracts : 

Best Team of Oxen, Hiram Converse $50 00 

Best Horse Colt, George Parish 25 00 

Best Filly, J. Staplin 20 00 

Best Brood Mare, A. Blunt 25 00 

BestBull, Wm. Johnson 25 00 

Best Heifer, A. M. Rogers 20 00 

Best Cow, C.Baker 25 00 

Best Stall-fed Beef, J. W. Taylor 10 00 

Best sample Wheat, Wm. Ottiey 5 00 

Best sample Flaxseed, H. Weir 3 00 

Best sample Timothy Seed, E. S. Hay ward 3 00 

Best sample Sweet Corn, L.Marshall.. 3 00 

Aggregate amount of twelve premiums $214 00 

An average of $17 S3 each. 

WHAT SLAVERY DID. 

At the Rowan County Agricultural Fair, held at Mineral 
Springs, in North Carolina, on 13th day of November, 1856, 
thirty premiums ranging from twenty-five cents to two dol- 
lars each, were awarded to successful competitors — the aggre- 
gate amount of said premiums being $42 00, or an average 
of $1 40 each. From the proceedings of the Awarding 
Committee we make the following extracts: 



16 



362 FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 

Best pair Match Horses, R. W. Griffith $2 00 

Best Horse Colt, T. A. Burke 2 00 

Best Filly, James Cowan 2 00 

Best Brood Mare, M. W. Goodman 2 00 

Best Bull, J. F. McCorkle 2 00 

Best Heifer, J. F. McCorkle 2 00 

Best Cow, T. A. Burke 2 00 

Best Stall-fed Beef, S. D. Rankin 1 00 

Best Sample Wheat, M. W. Goodman 50 

Best Lot Beets, J. J. Summerell 25 

Best Lot Turnips, Thomas Barber 25 

Best Lot Cabbage, Thomas Hyde 25 



te amount of twelve premiums $16 25 

An average of $1 36 each. 

Besides the two hundred and twenty premiums, amounting 
in the aggregate to $2,396, Freedom granted several diplo- 
mas and silver medals ; besides the thirty premiums amount- 
ing in the aggregate to $42, Slavery granted none — nothing. 
While examining these figures, it should be recollected that 
agriculture is the peculiar province of the Slave States. If 
commerce or manufactures bad been the subject of the fair, 
the result might have shown even a greater dispro2)ortion in 
favor of Freedom, and yet there would have been some 
excuse for Slavery, for it makes no pretensions to either the 
one or the other ; but as agriculture was the subject, Slavery 
can have no excuse whatever, but must bear all the shame 
of its niggardly and revolting impotence ; this it musl do 
for the reason that agriculture is its special and almost only 
pursuit. 

The Reports of the Comptrollers of the States of New 
York and North Carolina, for the year 1856, are now before 
us. From each report we have gleaned a single item, which 
when compared, the one with the other, speaks volumes in 
favor of Freedom and against Slavery. We refer to the 
average value per acre of lands in the two States ; let slave- 
holders read, reflect, and repent. 

In 1856, there were assessed for taxation in the State of 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 363 



NEW YORK. 

Va[ued° f at and 8( W°° 

Average value' pe'r'acre ".".".". ",'.'. ]'".'/. ". ." ,'.'. \\\\\ "'.'.'." '. \ \ ]\ * 1 » 112 . 1 ^ 1 |6 

In 1856, there were assessed for taxation in the State of 



XOETH CAROLINA. 

. $98^800^636 



SEA!"*-" -JMMyw 



Average value per acre 1V..IV/.""".*."V.'.'.V.".'.""V.".V 13 06 

It is difficult for us to make any remarks on the official facts 
above. Our indignation is struck almost dumb at this astound- 
ing and revolting display of the awful wreck that slavery is 
everywhere leaving behind it in the South. We will, however, 
go into a calculation for the purpose of ascertaining as 
nearly as possible, in this one particular, how much North 
Carolina has lost by the retention of slavery. As we have 
already seen, the average value per acre of land in the State 
of New York is $36 97 ; in North Carolina it is only $3 06 ; 
why is it so much less, or even any less, in the latter than in 
the former ? The answer is, Slavery. In soil, in climate, in 
minerals, in water-power for manufacturing purposes, and in 
area of territory, North Carolina has the advantage of New 
York, and, with the exception of slavery, no plausible reason 
can possibly be assigned why land should not be, at least, as 
valuable in the valley of the Yadkin as it is along the banks 
of the Genesee. 

The difference between $36 97 and $3 06 is $33 91, which, 
multiplied by the whole number of acres of land in North 
Carolina, will show, in this one particular, the enormous loss 
that freedom has sustained on account of slavery in the 
Old North State. Thus : 

32,450,560 acres a $33 91 ... . $1,100,398,489. 



364: FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 

Let it be indelibly impressed on the mind, however, that 
this amount, large as it is, is only a moiety of the sum that it 
has cost to maintain slavery in North Carolina. From time to 
time, hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars have left 
the State, either in search of profitable, permanent invest- 
ment abroad, or in the shape of profits to Northern merchants 
and manufacturers, who have become the moneyed aristo- 
cracy of the country by supplying to the South such articles 
of necessity, utility, and adornment, as would have been 
produced at home but for the pernicious presence of the 
" peculiar institution." 

A reward of eleven hundred million of dollars is offered 
for the conversion of the lands of North Carolina into free 
soil. The lands themselves, desolate and impoverished under 
the fatal foot of slavery, offer the reward. How, then, can 
it be made to appear that the abolition of slavery in North 
Carolina, and, indeed, throughout all the Southern States — 
for slavery is exceedingly inimical to them all — is not de- 
manded by every consideration of justice, prudence and good 
sense ? In 1850, the total value of all the slaves of the State 
at the rate of four hundred dollars per head, amounted to 
less than one hundred and sixteen million of dollars. Is the 
sum of one hundred and sixteen million of dollars more desir- 
able than the sum of eleven hundred million of dollars? 
When a man has land for sale, does he reject thirty-six dollars 
per acre and take three ? Non-slaveholding Whites ! look well 
to your interests ! Many of you have lands ; comparatively 
speaking, you have nothing else. x\bolish slavery, and you 
will enhance the value of every league, your own and your 
neighbors', from three to thirty-six dollars per acre. Your 
little tract containing two hundred acres, now valued at the 
pitiful sum of only six hundred dollars, will then be worth 
seven thousand. Your children, now deprived of even the 



FREE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 365 

meagre advantages of common schools, will then reap the 
benefits of a collegiate education. Your rivers and smaller 
streams, now wasting their waters in idleness, will then turn 
the wheels of multitudinous mills. Your bays and harbors, 
now unknown to commerce, will then swarm with ships 
from every enlightened quarter of the globe. Non-slavehold- 
ing Whites ! look well to your interests ! 

Would the slaveholders of North Carolina lose anything by 
the abolition of slavery ? Let us see. According to their 
own estimate, their slaves are worth, in round numbers,. say, 
one hundred and twenty millions of dollars. There are in the 
State twenty-eight thousand slaveholders, owning, it may be 
safely assumed, an average of at least five hundred acres of 
land each — fourteen millions of acres in all. This number of 
acres, multiplied by thirty-three dollars and ninety-one cents, 
the difference in value between free soil and slave soiL makes 
the enormous sum of four hundred and seventy-four million 
of dollars — showing that by the abolition of slavery, the 
slaveholders themselves would realize a net profit of not less 
than three hundred and fifty-four million of dollars. 

Not long since, a gentleman in Baltimore, a native of 
Maryland, remarked in our presence, that he was an abolition- 
ist because he felt that it was right and proper to be one ; 
" but," inquired he, " are there not, in some of the States, 
many widows and orphans who would be left in destitute 
circumstances, if their negroes were taken from them ?" In 
answer to the question, we replied that slavery had already 
reduced thousands and tens of thousands of non-slaveholding 
widows and orphans to the lowest depths of poverty and ig- 
norance, and that we did not believe one slaveholding widow 
and three orphans were of more, or even of as much conse- 
quence as five non-slaveholding widows and fifteen orphans. 
" You are right," exclaimed the gentleman, " you are right ; I 



366 FKEE FIGURES AND SLAVE. 

had not viewed the subject in that light before ; I perceive 
you go in for the greatest good to the greatest number." Of 
course we were right — we do go in for the greatest good to 
the greatest number. 

The fact is, every slave in the South costs the State in which 
he resides at least three times as much as he, in the whole 
course of his life, is worth to his master. Slavery benefits no 
one but its immediate, individual owners, and them only in a 
pecuniary point of view, and at the sacrifice of the dearest 
rights and interests of the whole mass of non-slaveholders, 
white and black. Even the masters themselves, as we have 
already shown, would have been far better off without it than 
with it. To all classes of society the system is a curse ; an 
especial curse is it to those who own it not. Non-slavehold- 
ing Whites ! look well to your interests ! 



CHAPTER X. 



COMMERCIAL CITIES SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 

If great improvements are seldom to be expected from great proprietors, 
they are least of all to be expected when they employ slaves for their work- 
men. The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the 
work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in 
the end the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property, can have 
no interest but to eat as much, and to labor as little as possible. Whatever 
work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can 
be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.— 
Adam Smith. 

Degraded to a beast of burden, the slave never raises himself above a blind 
routine, and one generation succee'ds another without any progress in improve- 
ment.— Jeremy Bentham. 

Gods ! can a Roman Senate long debate 
Which of the two to choose, slavery or death ? 
******** 

A day — an hour of virtuous liberty, 
Is worth a whole eternity of bondage. 

Addison. 

Our theme is a city — a great Southern importing, export- 
ing and manufacturing city, to be located at some point or 
port on the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia or Virginia, where 
we can carry on active commerce, buy, sell, fabricate, receive 
the profits which accrue from the exchange of our own com- 
modities, open facilities for direct communication with foreign 
countries, and establish all those collateral sources of wealth, 
utility and adornment, which are the usual concomitants of a 
metropolis, and which add so very materially to the interest 

86T 



308 COMMERCIAL CITIES SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 

and importance of a nation. Without a city of this kind, the 
South can never develop her commercial resources nor attain 
to that eminent position to which those vast resources would 
otherwise exalt her. According to calculations based upon 
reasonable estimates, it is owing to the lack of a .great com- 
mercial city in the South, that we are now annually drained 
of more than One Hundred and Twenty Millions of Dollars ! 
We should, however, take into consideration the negative loss 
as well as the positive. Especially should we think of the 
influx of emigrants, of the visits of strangers and cosmopo- 
lites, of the patronage to hotels and public halls, of the profits 
of travel and transportation, of the emoluments of foreign and 
domestic trade, and of numerous other advantages which have 
their origin exclusively in wealthy, enterprising and densely 
populated cities. 

Nothing is more evident than the fact, that our jieople have 
never entertained a proper opinion of the importance of home 
cities. Blindly, and greatly to our own injury, we have con- 
tributed hundreds of millions of dollars toward the erection 
of mammoth cities at the North, while our own magnificent 
bays and harbors have been most shamefully disregarded and 
neglected. Now, instead of carrying all our money to New 
York, Philadelphia, Boston and Cincinnati, suppose we had 
kept it on the South side of Mason and Dixon's line — as we 
would have done had it not been for slavery — and had dis- 
bursed it in the upbuilding of Norfolk, Beaufort, Charleston 
or Savannah, how much richer, better, greater would the 
South have been to-day ? How much larger and more intelli- 
gent would have been our population ? How many hun- 
dred thousand natives of the South would now be thriving at 
home, instead of adding to the wealth and political power of 
other parts of the Union ? How much greater would be the 
number and length of our railroads, canals, turnpikes and 



COMMERCIAL CITIES — SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 369 

telegraphs ? How much greater would be the extent and 
diversity of our manufactures ? How much greater would he 
the grandeur, and how much larger would he the number of 
Our churches, theatres, schools, colleges, lyceums, banks, hotels, 
stores and private dwellings ? How many more clippers and 
steamships would we have sailing on the ocean, how vastly 
more reputable would we be abroad, how infinitely more re- 
spectable, progressive and happy would we be at home ? 

That we may learn something of the importance of cities 
in general, let us look for a moment at the great capitals of 
the world. What would England be without London ? 
What would France be without Paris? What would Tur- 
key be without Constantinople ? Or, to come nearer home, 
what would Maryland be without Baltimore ? What would 
Louisiana be without New Orleans? What would South 
Carolina be without Charleston ? Do we ever think of these 
countries or States without thinking of their cities also ? If 
we want to learn the news of the country, do we not go to 
the city, or to the city papers ? Every metropolis may be 
regarded as the nucleus or epitome of the country in which 
it is situated ; and the more prominent features and charac- 
teristics of a country, particularly of the people of a country, 
are almost always to be seen within the limits of its capital 
city. Almost invariably do we find the bulk of the floating 
funds, the best talent, and the most vigorous energies of a 
nation concentrated in its chief cities ; and does not this con- 
centration of wealth, energy and talent conduce, in an extra- 
ordinary degree, to the growth and prosperity of a nation ? 
Unquestionably. Wealth develops wealth, energy develops 
energy, talent develops talent. What, then, must be the 
condition of those countries which do not possess the means 
or facilities of centralizing their material forces, their ener- 
gies and their talents ? Are they not destined to occupy an 

16* 



370 COMMERCIAL CITIES — SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 

inferior rank among the nations of the earth ? Let the South 
answer. 

And now let us ask, and we would put the question par- 
ticularly to Southern merchants, what do we so much need as 
a great Southern metropolis ? Merchants of the South, 
slaveholders ! you are the avaricious assassinators of your 
country ! You are the channels through which more than 
one hundred and twenty millions of dollars are annually 
drained from the South and conveyed to the North. You 
are daily engaged in the unmanly and unpatriotic work of 
impoverishing the land of your birth. You are constantly 
enfeebling our resources and rendering us more and more 
tributary to distant parts of the nation. Your conduct is 
reprehensible, base, criminal. 

"Whether Southern merchants ever think of the numerous 
ways in which they contribute to the aggrandizement of the 
North, while, at the same time, they enervate and dishonor 
the South, has for many years, with us, been a matter of more 
than ordinary conjecture. If, as it would seem, they have 
never yet thought of the subject, it is certainly desirable that 
they should exercise their minds upon it at once. Let them 
scrutinize the workings of Southern money after it passes 
north of Mason and Dixon's line. Let them consider how 
much they pay to Northern railroads and hotels, how much to 
Northern merchants and shopkeepers, how much to Northern 
shippers and insurers, how much to Northern theatres, news- 
papers and periodicals. Let them also consider what dispo- 
sition is made of it after it is lodged in the hands of the 
North. Is not the greater part of it paid out to Northern 
manufacturers, mechanics and laborers, for the very articles 
which are purchased at the North — and to the extent that 
this is done, are not Northern manufacturers, mechanics, and 
laborers directly countenanced and encouraged, while, at the 



COMMERCIAL CITIES SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 



371 



same time, Southern manufacturers, mechanics, and laborers, 
are indirectly abased, depressed and disabled ? It is, how- 
ever, a matter of impossibility, on these small pages, to notice 
or enumerate all the methods in which the money we deposit 
in the North is made to operate against us; suffice it to say 
that it is circulated and expended there, among all classes of 
the people, to the injury and impoverishment of almost every 
individual in the South. And yet, our cousins of the North 
are not, by any means, blameworthy for availing themselves 
of the advantages which we have voluntarily yielded to them. 
They have shown their wisdom in growing great at our ex- 
pense, and we have shown our folly in allowing them to do 
so. In this respect, Southern merchants, slaveholders, and 
slavebreeders, should be the special objects of our censure; 
they have desolated and impoverished the South ; they are 
now making merchandise of the vitals of their country ; patri- 
otism is a word nowhere recorded in their vocabulary ; town, 
city, country — they care for neither ; with them, self is always 
paramount to every other consideration. 

From letters received in 1857, from the mayors of eighteen 
of our great commercial cities, nine free, and nine slave, 
which letters have been published in all the original book 
editions of this work, we present the following important 
particulars : 

NINE FREE CITIES. 



Name. 


Population. 


Wealth.. 


Wealth 
per capita. 




700,000 

500,000 

165,000 

225,000 

210,000 

112,000 

60,000 

90,000 

21,000 


$511,740,492 
325,000,000 
249,162,500 
95,800,440 
88,810,734 
171,000,000 
58,064,516 
45,474,476 
27,047,000 


$781 




650 




1,510 




425 




422 
1,527 




967 




505 




1,288 




2,0S3,000 


$1,572,100,158 


$754 



372 



COMMERCIAL CITIES SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 



XINE SLAVE CITIES. 



Name. 


Population. 


Wealth. 


Wealth 
per capita. 


Baltimore 


250,000 
175,000 
140,000 
60,000 
70,(100 
40,000 
17,000 
25,000 
10,000 


$102,053,S39 
91,188,195 

63,000,000 
36,127,751 
31,500,000 
20,143,520 
12,000,000 
11,999,015 
7,850,000 


$40S 
521 




• 450 




602 




450 




503 




705 




480 


Wilmington 


785 




7S7,000 


$375,802,320 


$477 



Let it not be forgotten that the slaves themselves are valued 
at so much per head, and counted as part of the wealth of 
slave cities ; and yet, though we assent, as we have done, to 
the inclusion of all this fictitious wealth, it will he observed 
that the residents of free cities are far wealthier, per capita, 
than the residents of slave cities. The reader, we trust, will 
not fail to examine the figures with great care. 

In this age of the world, Commerce is an indispensable ele- 
ment of national greatness. Without commerce we can have 
no great cities, and without great cities we can have no relia- 
ble tenure of distinct nationality. Commerce is the forerunner 
of wealth and population ; and it is mainly these that make 
invincible the power of undying states. 

Speaking in general terms of the commerce of this country, 
and of the great cities through which that commerce is chiefly 
carried on, the " Boston Traveller " says : 

" The wealth concentrated at the great commercial points of the 
United States is truly astonishing. Tor instance, one-eighth part of 
the entire property of this country is owned by the cities of New- 
York and Boston. Boston alone, in its corporate limits, owns one- 
twentieth of the property of this entire Union, being an amount equal 
to the wealth of any three of the New England States, except Massa* 
chusetts. fn this city is found the richest community, per capita. 



COMMERCIAL CITIES SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 373 

of any in the United States. The next city in point of wealth, ac- 
cording to its population, is Providence, (R. I.,) which city is one of 
the richest in the Union, having a valuation of fifty-six millions, with 
a population of fifty thousand." 

The same paper, in the course of an editorial article on the 
"Wealth of Boston and its Business," says : 

" The assessors' return of the wealth of Boston will probably show 
this year an aggregate property of nearly three hundred millions. 
This sum, divided among 100,000 people, would give nearly $2,000 
to each inhabitant, and will show Boston to be much the wealthiest 
community in the United States, save New York alone, with four 
times its population. The value of the real estate in this city is in- 
creasing now with great rapidity, as at least four millions of dollars' 
worth of new houses and stores will be built this year. The personal 
estate in ships, cargoes, stocks, etc., is greatly increasing with each 
succeeding year, notwithstanding the many disasters and losses con- 
stantly occurring in such kinds of property. 

" It is impossible to get the exact earnings of the nearly six hun- 
dred thousand tons of sbipping owned in this city. But perhaps it, 
would not be' much out of the way to set the total amount for 1855 
at from fifteen to twenty millions of dollars. This sum has probably 
been earned by our fleet engaged in the domestic trade, and in com- 
mercial transactions with the East and "West Indies, South America, 
the Pacific, Europe, and Africa. The three sources from which the 
population of Boston is maintained, and its prosperity continued, are 
these : Commerce, trade, and manufactures. Its annual trade and 
sales of merchandise are said now, by competent judges, to amount 
to three hundred millions of goods per annum, and will soon greatly 
exceed that vast sum. The annual manufactures of this city are much 
more in amount than in many entire States in this Union. They 
amount, according to recent statistics, to nearly seventy-five millions 
of dollars." 

The late Freeman Hunt, as editor of "Hunt's Mer- 



374 COMMERCIAL CITIES — SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 

chants' Magazine,'' writing on the " Progressive Growth of 
Cities," says : 

" London is now the greatest concentration of human power the 
world has ever known. "Will its supremacy be permanent ? or will 
it, like its predecessors, be eclipsed by western rivals ? New-Yorkers 
do not doubt, and indeed have no reason to doubt, that their city, 
now numbering little more than one third of the population of Lon- 
don, will, within the next fifty years, be greater than the metropolis 
of the British empire. 

" New York, with her immediate dependencies, numbers about 
900,000. Since 1790 she has established a law of growth which 
doubles her population once in fifteen years. If this law continues 
to operate, she may be expected to possess 1,800,000 in 1871, 
3,600,000 in 1886, and 7,200,000 in 1901. If twenty years be allowed 
New York as her future period of duplication, she would overtake 
London by the end of fifty years; London may then have five 
millions; New York will almost certainly have more than that 
number. 

"Will the star of empire become stationary at New York? The 
interior plain of North America has within itself more means to sus- 
tain a dense population in civilized comfort than any other region 
of the world. The star of empire cannot be arrested in its western 
course before it reaches this plain. Its most promising city, at pre- 
sent, is Chicago. The law of its growth since 1840 seems to be a 
duplication within four years. It 1840 it numbered 4,379. In Juno 
of this year it will contain 88,000. At the same rate of increase 
carried forward, it would overtake New York within twenty years. 
If six years be allowed for each future duplication, Chicago would 
overtake New York in thirty-three years. If the growth of Chicago 
should in future be measured by a duplication of every seven years, 
it would contain 5,622,000 in forty-two years. 

" In 1901, forty-five years from this time, the central plain, includ- 
ing the Canadas, will contain about eighty millions of people. Its 
chief city may be reasonably expected to contain about one-tenth of 
this population. Before the end of this century the towns and cities 
of the contra! plain will contain, with their suburbs, not less than 



COMMERCIAL CITIES — SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 375 

half the entire population ; that is to say, forty millions. How these 
millions shall be apportioned among the cities of that day, is a sub- 
ject for curious speculation." 

A FLEET OF MERCHANTMEN". 

The Boston " Journal," of a recent date, says : 

" About one hundred sail of vessels, of various descriptions, entered 
this port yesterday, consisting of traders from Europe, South Ame- 
rica, the "West Indies, and from coastwise ports. The waters of the 
bay and li arbor presented a beautiful appearance from the surround- 
ing shores, as this fleet of white-winged messengers made their way 
toward the city, and crowds of people must have witnessed their ad- 
vent with great delight. A more magnificent sight is seldom seen 
in our harbor." 

Would to heaven that such sights could sometimes be seen 
in Southern harbors ! When slavery shall cease to paralyze 
the energies of our people, then ships, coming to us from the 
four quarters of the globe, will, with majestic grandeur, begin 
to loom in the distance ; our bays will rejoice in the presence 
of " the white-winged messengers," and our levees resound 
as never before with the varied din of commerce. 

How it is, in this enlightened age, that men of ordinary 
intelligence can be so far led into error as to suppose that 
commerce, or any other noble enterprise, can be established 
and successfully prosecuted under the dominion of slavery, is, 
to us, one of the most inexplicable of mysteries. Southern 
Conventions, composed of the self-titled lordlings of slavery, 
Generals, Colonels, Majors, Captains, and 'Squires — may act 
out their annual programmes of farcical nonsense from now 
until doomsday ; but they will never add one iota to the ma- 
terial, moral, or mental interests of the South — never can, 
until their ebony idol shall have been utterly demolished. 



376 COMMERCIAL CITIES — SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 



BALTIMORE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 

We are indebted to the Baltimore " Patriot " for the fol- 
lowing interesting sketch of the Monumental City as it was, 
and as it is, and as it may be : 

"The population of Baltimore in 1790 was 13,503; in 1800, 
15,514; in 1810, 35,583; in 1820, 62,738; in 1830, 80,625; in 1840, 
110,313; in 1850, 169,054. The increase of inhabitants within two 
particular decades, will be found, by reference to the above table, to 
be remarkable. Between 1800 and 1810, the population nearly 
doubled itself; between 1840 and 1850, the increase was two-thirds; 
and for the past five years the numerical extension of our population 
has been even more rapid than during the previous decade. "We 
may safely assume that Baltimore contains, at the present time, not 
less than 250,000 inhabitants. But the increase in the manufactured 
products of the State, as shown by the report of the Secretary oft lie 
Treasury, is a matter of even greater astonishment. The statistical 
tables of 1840 estimate the aggregate value of the manufactures of 
Maryland at $13,509,636 — thirteen million jive "hundred, and vine 
thousand six hundred and thirty-six dollars. In 1850, the value of 
the articles manufactured within the limits of the State amounted 
to $32,593,635 — thirty-two million Jive hundred and ninety-three 
thousand six hundred and thirty-five dollars ! A signal proof that 
the wealth of the State has increased with even far greater rapidity 
than its population. A quarter of a century ago, the sum of our manu- 
factures did not much exceed five millions of dollars per annum. At 
this day it may be set down as falling but little short of fifty millions. 
These are facts taken from official sources, and therefore understated 
rather than exceeded. They are easily verified by any one who will 
take the necessary trouble to examine the reports for himself; and they 
justify us in the assertion that we are but fifteen years behind Phila- 
delphia in population, and are only at the same relative distance 
from her in point of wealth. 

"A change has been going on for some time past in our commercial 
and industrial affairs which all may have noticed, but the extent of 



COMMERCIAL CITIES — SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 377 

"which is known to but few, and we hazard nothing in saying that 
this enormous progression must continue, because it is based upon a 
solid foundation, and therefore subject to no ordinary contingencies. 

" Occupying geographically the most central position on this Conti- 
nent, with vast mines of coal lying within easy distance to the north 
and west of us, with a harbor easy of access, and with railroads 
penetrating by the shortest routes the most fertile sections of the 
Union, we need nothing but the judicious fostering of a proper 
spirit among our citizens to make Baltimore not only the commer- 
cial emporium of the South and West, but also the great coal mart 
of the Union. Our flour market is already the most extensive in 
ihe known world — we speak without exaggeration, for this also is 
proven by unquestionable facts. There is more guano annually 
brought into our port than into all the other ports of the United 
States put together, and the demand for this important article of 
commerce is steadily increasing. Our shipments of tobacco are 
immense, and as the improvement in the depth of the channel of the 
Patapsco increases, must inevitably become much greater. 

" Such, then, is our present condition as a commercial community 
and when we add that our prosperity is as much owing to our 
admirable geographical position as to the energy of our merchants 
and manufacturers, we design to cast no imputation on these excel- 
lent citizens, but rather to stimulate them to reneAved efforts in a 
field where enterprise cannot fail of reaping its due reward. 

" Take any common map of the United States and rule an air line 
across it from Baltimore to St. Louis, and midway between the two 
it will strike Cincinnati — the great inland centre of trade — travers- 
ing at the same time those wonderfully fertile valleys which lie 
between the latter point and the Mississippi river. Now let it be 
remembered that since the introduction of railways fluvial naviga- 
tion has been, to a considerable extent, superseded by inland transport, 
because of the greater speed and certainty of the latter. Let it be 
remembered also that the migration westward is incessantly going 
on, and that with every farm opened within striking distance of a 
great arterial railway, or its anastomosing branches, a certain amount 
of freight must find its way to the seaboard markets, while the 
demand for manufactured products, and for domestic or foreign 



378 COMMERCIAL CITIES — SOUTHERN COMMERCE 

commodities, in exchange for breadstuffs or raw material, most 
necessarily increase ; thereby adding greatly to the prosperity of the 
commercial centre toward wbich articles of export tend, and from 
which imports in return are drawn. It would be difficult to esti- 
mate the value of what this trade will be fifty years hence, or what 
the population of Baltimore, situated as she is, will, by that time 
have become. 

" Reasoning from causes to effects, and presuming that ordinary 
perseverance will be used in promoting the interests of our city, 
industrially and commercially, we are justified in believing that its 
progress must be in an accelerated ratio, and that there are those 
now living who will look back with surprise and wonder at its 
growth and magnitude, as we have done while comparing its present 
aspect with that which it exhibited within our own memory." 

It is a remarkable fact, but one not at all surprising to those 
whose philosophy leads them to think aright, that Baltimore 
and St. Louis, the two most prosperous cities in the Slave 
States, have fewer slaves in proportion to the aggregate popu- 
lation than any other city or cities in the South. While the 
entire population of the former is now estimated at 250,000, 
and that of the latter at 150,000 — making a grand total of 
400,000 in the two cities, less than 6,000 of this latter number 
are slaves ; indeed, neither city is cursed with half the number 
of 0,000. 

In 1S50, there Avere only 2,946 slaves in Baltimore, and 
2,656 in St. Louis — total in the two cities, 5,602 ; and in both 
places, thank heaven, this heathenish class of the population 
was rapidly decreasing. The census of 1870, will, in all pro- 
bability, show that the two cities are entirely exempt from 
slaves and slavery ; and that of 1880 will, we prayerfully hope, 
show that the United States at large, at that time, will have 
been wholly redeemed from the unspeakable crime and curse 
of human bondage. 

AVhat about Southern commerce ? Is it not almost entirely 



COMMERCIAL CITIES — SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 379 

tributary to the commerce of the North ? Are we not de- 
pendent on New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Cincinnati, 
for nearly every article of merchandise, whether foreign or 
domestic? Where are our ships, our mariners, our naval 
architects ? Alas ! echo answers, where ? 

Reader! would you understand how abjectly slaveholders 
themselves are enslaved to the products of Northern indus- 
try? If you would, fix your mind on a Virginia gentleman — 
a breeder, buyer, and seller of bipedal black cattle — who, 
withal, professes to be a Christian ! Observe the routine of 
his daily life. See him rise in the morning from a Northern 
bed, and clothe himself in Northern apparel ; see him walk 
across the floor on a Northern carpet, and perform his ablu- 
tions out of a Northern ewer and basin. See him uncover a 
box of Northern powders, and cleanse his teeth with a 
Northern brush ; see him reflecting his physiognomy in a 
Northern mirror, and arranging his hair with a Northern 
comb. See him dosing himself with the medicaments of 
Northern quacks, and perfuming his handkerchief with 
Northern cologne. See him referring to the time in a Northern 
watch, and glancing at the news in a Northern gazette. See 
him and his family sitting in Northern chairs, and singing and 
praying out of Northern books. .See him at the breakfast 
table, saying grace over a Northern plate, eating with Northern 
cutlery, and drinking from Northern utensils. See him 
charmed with the melody of a Northern piano, or musing 
over the pages of a Northern novel. See him riding to his 
neighbor's in a Northern carriage, or furrowing his lands with 
a Northern plough. See him lighting his cigar with a Nor- 
thern match, and flogging his negroes with a' Northern lash. 
See him with Northern pen *and ink, Avriting letters on 
Northern paper, and sending them away in Northern enve- 
lopes, sealed with Northern wax, and impressed with a 



380 COMMEECIAL CITIES — SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 

Northern stamp. Perhaps our Virginia gentleman is a mer- 
chant ; if so, see him at his store, making an unpatriotic use 
of his time in the miserable traffic of Northern gimcracks and 
haberdashery ; see him when you will, where you will, he is 
ever surrounded with the industrial products of those whom, 
in the strange inconsistency of his heart, he execrates as ene- 
mies, yet treats as friends. His labors, his talents, his influ- 
ence, are all for the North, and not for the South. For the 
stability of slavery, and for the sake of his own personal 
aggrandizement, he is willing to sacrifice, and does sacrifice, 
the dearest interests of his country. 

As we see our ruinous system of commerce exemplified in 
the family of our Virginian gentleman — a branch of one of the 
first fiunilies, of course ! — so we may see it exemplified, to a 
greater or lesser degree, in almost every other family through- 
out the length and breadth of the slaveholding States. We 
are all constantly buying, and selling, and wearing, and using 
Northern merchandise, at a double expense to both ourselves 
and our neighbors. If Ave but look at ourselves attentively, 
we shall find that Ave are all clothed cap-d-pie in Northern 
habiliments. Our hats, our caps, our cravats, our coats, our 
vests, our pants, our gloves, our boots, our shoes, our under- 
garments — all come from the North ; whence, too, Southern 
ladies procure all their bonnets, plumes, and flowers ; dresses, 
shawls, and scarfs ; frills, ribbons, and ruffles ; cuffs, capes, and 
collars. 

True it is that the South has wonderful powers of endur- 
ance and recuperation ; but she cannot forever support the 
reckless prodigality of her sons. We are all spendthrifts ; 
some of us should become financiers. We must learn to take 
care of our money ; we should withhold it from the North, 
and open avenues for its circulation at home. We should not 
run to New York, to Philadelphia, to Boston, to Cincinnati, 



COMMERCIAL CITIES SOUTHERN COMMERCE. 381 

or to any other Northern city, every time we want a shoe- 
string or a bedstead, a fish-hook or a hand-saw, a tooth-pick or 
a cotton-gin. In ease and luxury we have been lolling long 
enough ; we should now bestir ourselves, and keep pace with 
the progress of the age. We must expand our energies, and 
acquire habits of enterprise and industry ; we should arouse 
ourselves from the couch of lassitude, and inure our minds to 
thought and our bodies to action. We must begin to feed on 
a more substantial diet than that of pro-slavery politics ; we 
should leave off our siestas and post-meridian naps, and em- 
ploy our time in profitable vocations. Before us there is a 
vast work to be accomplished — a work which has been accu- 
mulating on our hands for many years. It is no less a work 
than that of infusing the spirit of liberty into all our systems of 
commerce, agriculture, manufactures, government, literature, 
and religion. Oligarchal despotism must be overthrown ; 
slavery must be abolished. 



CHAPTER XI. 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

Slavery is the infringement of all laws. A law having a tendency to pre- 
serve slavery would be the grossest sacrilege. Man to be possessed by his 
fellow-man! — man to be made property of! The image of the Deity to be put 
under the yoke ! Let these usurpers show us their title-deeds ! — Bolivar. 

Meanwhile a change was proceeding, infinitely more momentous than the 
acquisition or loss of any province, than the rise or fall of any dynasty. 
Slavery, and the evils by which slavery is everywhere accompanied, were fast 
disappearing. — Macaulay. 

He who permits oppression, shares the crime. 

Darwin. 

Liberty! thou goddess heavenly bright! 
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight ! 
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, 
And smiling Plenty leads thy wanton train. 

Addison. 

Freedom's battle once begun, 

Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son, 
Though baffled oft, is ever won. 

Byron. 

Finding that we shall have to leave unsaid a great many 
things which we intended to say, and that we shall have to 
omit much valuable matter, the product of other pens than 
our own, but which, having collected at considerable labor 
and expense, we had hoped to be able to introduce, we have 
concluded to present, under the above heading, only a few of 
the more important particulars. 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 383 

In the first place, Ave will give an explanation of the reason 

WHY THE PRESENT VOLUME WAS NOT PUBLISHED IN 
BALTIMORE. 

A considerable portion of this work was written in Balti- 
more ; and the whole of it would have been written and pub- 
lished there, but for the following odious clause, which we 
extract from the Statutes of Maryland : 

" Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland, That after 
the passage of this act, it shall not be lawful for any citizen of this 
State, knowingly to make, print, or engrave, or aid in the making, 
printing, or engraving, within this State, any pictorial representation, 
or to write or print, or to aid in the writing or printing any pamph- 
let, newspaper, handbill or other paper of an inflammatory character, 
and having a tendency to excite discontent, or stir up insurrection 
amongst the people of color of this State, or of either of the other 
States or Territories of the United States, or knowingly to carry or 
send, or to aid in the carrying or sending the same for circulation 
amongst the inhabitants of either of the other States or Territories 
of the United States, and any person so offending shall be guilty of a 
felony, and shall on conviction be sentenced to confinement in the 
penitentiary of this State, for a period not less than ten nor more 
than twenty years, from the time of sentence pronounced on such 
person." — Act passed Dec. 1831. See 2d Dorset/, page 1218. 

Now, so long as slaveholders are clothed with the mantle 
of office, so long will they continue to make laws, like the 
above, expressly calculated to bring the non-slaveholding 
whites under a system of vassalage little less onerous and 
debasing than that to which the negroes themselves are ac- 
customed. What- wonder is it that there is no native litera- 
ture in the South ? The South can never have a literature 
of her own until after slavery shall have been abolished. 
Slaveholders are either too lazy or too ignorant to write it, 



384 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

and the non-slaveholders— even the few whose minds are cul- 
tivated at all — are not permitted even to make the attempt. 
Down with the oligarchy ! Ineligibility of slaveholders— 
never another vote to the trafficker in human flesh ! 



LEGISLATIVE ACTS AGAINST SLAVERY. 

In his Compendium of the Seventh Census, Mr. DeBow 
has compiled the following useful and highly interesting 
facts : 

" The Continental Congress of 1774 resolved to discontinue the 
slave trade, in which resolution they were anticipated by the Con- 
ventions of Delegates of Virginia and North Carolina. In 1789 the 
Convention to frame the federal Constitution, looked to the abolition 
of the traffic in 1S08. On the 2d of March, 1807, Congress passed 
an Act against importations of Africans into the United States after 
January 1st, 1808. An act in Great Britain in 1807 also made the 
slave trade unlawful. Denmark forbid the introduction of African 
slaves into her colonies after 1804. The Congress of Vienna, in 1815, 
pronounced for the abolition of the trade. France abolished it in 
1817, and also Spain, but the acts were to take effect after 1820. 
Portugal abolished it in 1818. 

" In Pennsylvania slavery was abolished in 1780. In New Jersey 
it was provisionally abolished in 1784 ; all children born of a slave 
after 1804 are made free in 1820. In Massachusetts, it was declared 
after the revolution, that slavery was virtually abolished by their 
Constitution (1780). In 1784 and 1797, Connecticut provided for a 
gradual extinction of slavery. In Ehode Island, after 1784, no per- 
son could be born a slave. The constitutions of Vermont and New 
Hampshire, respectively, abolished slavery. In New York it was 
provisionally abolished in 1799, twenty-eight years' ownership being 
allowed in slaves born after that date, and in 1817 it was enacted 
that slavery was not to exist after ten years, or 1827. The 
ordinance of 1787 forbid slavery in the territory northwest of the 
Ohio." 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 385 

Besides the instances enumerated above, Slavery has been 
abolished in more than forty different parts of the world 
Avithin the last half century, and with good results every- 
where, except two or three West India islands, where the 
negro population was greatly in excess of the white ; and 
even in these, the evils, if any, that have followed, are not 
justly attributable to abolition, but to the previous demorali- 
zation produced by slavery. 

In tills connection we may very properly introduce the tes- 
timony of a West India planter to the relative advantages of 
free over slave labor. Listen to Charles Pettyjohn, of Bar- 
badoes, who, addressing himself to a citizen of our own coun- 
try, says : 

" In 1834, I came in possession of 257 slaves, under the laws of 
England, which required the owner to feed, clothe, and furnish them 
with medical attendance. With this number I cultivated my sugar 
plantation until the Emancipation Act of August 1st, 1838, when 
they all became free. I now hire a portion of those slaves, the best 
and cheapest of course, as you hire men in the United States. The 
average number which I employ is 100, with which I cultivate more 
land at a cheaper rate, and make more produce than I did with 257 
slaves. With my slaves I made from 100 to 180 tons of sugar yearly. 
With 100 free negroes I think I do badly if I do not annually pro- 
duce 250 tons." 

If, in the forty and more instances to which we have 
alluded, the abolition of slavery had proved injurious in a 
majority of cases, the attempt to abolish it elsewhere might, 
perhaps, be regarded as an ill-advised effort ; but, seeing that 
its abolition has worked well in at least fourteen-fifteenths of 
all the cases on record, the fact becomes obvious that it is 
our duty and our interest to continue to abolish it until the 
whole world shall be freed, or until we shall begin to see 
more evil than good result from our acts of emancipation. 

17 



386 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY TIJE WAYSIDE. 



SLAVERY THOUGHTFUL SIGNS OF CONTRITION. 

The real condition of the South is most graphically de- 
scribed in the following doleful admissions from the Charles- 
ton " Standard :" 

"In its every aspect, our present condition is provincial. We 
have within our limits no solitary metropolis of interest or ideas — 
no marts of exchange — no radiating centres of opinion. Whatever 
we have of genius and productive energy, goes freely in to swell the 
importance of the North. Possessing the material which constitutes 
two-thirds of the commerce of the whole country, it might have 
been supposed that we conld have influence upon the councils of 
foreign States; but we are never taken into contemplation. It 
might have been supposed that England, bound to us by the cords 
upon which depend the existence of four millions of her subjects, 
would be considerate of our feelings ; but receiving her cotton from 
the North, it is for them she has concern, and it is her interest and 
her pleasure to reproach us. It might have been supposed,, that, 
producing the material which is sent abroad, to us would come the 
articles that are taken in exchange for it ; but to the North they go 
for distribution, and to us are parcelled out the fabrics that are suited 
to so remote a section. 

" Instead, therefore, of New York being tributary to Norfolk, 
Charleston, Savannah or New Orleans, these cities are tributary to 
New York. Instead of the merchants of New York standing cap in 
hand to the merchants of Charleston, the merchants of Charleston 
stand cap in hand to the merchants of New York. Instead of receiv- 
ing foreign ships in Southern waters, and calling up the merchants 
of the country to a distribution of the cargo, the merchants of the 
South are hurried off to make a distribution elsewhere. In virtue 
of our relations to a greater system, we have lit ^development of 
internal interests; receiving supplies from the great centre, we have 
made little effort to supply ourselves. We support the makers of 
boots, shoes, hats, coats, shirts, flannels, blankets, carpets, chairs, 
tables, mantels, mats, carriages, jewelry, cradles, couches, coffins, by 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 387 

the thousand and hundreds of thousands ; but they scorn to live 
amongst us. They must have the gaieties and splendors of a great 
metropolis, and are not content to vegetate upon the dim verge of 
this remote frontier. 

" As it is in material interest, so it is in arts and letters— our pictures 
are painted at the North, our books are published at the North, our 
periodicals and papers are printed at the North. "We are even fed 
on police reports and villainy from the North. The papers pub- • 
lished at the South which ignore the questions at issue between the 
sections are generally well sustained ; the books which expose the 
evils of our institution are even read with avidity beyond our limits, 
but the ideas that are turned to the condition of the South are in- 
tensely provincial. If, as things now are, a man should rise with all 
the genius of Shakspeare or Dickens, or Fielding, or of all the three 
combined, and speak from the South, he would not receive enough 
to pay the costs of publication. If published at the South, his book 
would never be seen or heard of, and published at the North it 
would not be read. So perfect is our provincialism, therefore, that 
enterprise is forced to the North for a sphere— talent for a market — 
genius for the ideas upon which to work — indolence for ease, and 
the tourist for attractions." 

This extract exhibits in bold relief, ami in small space, a 
large number of the present evils of past errors. It is charm- 
ingly frank and truthful. De Quincey's " Confessions of an 
Opium Eater," are nothing to it. A distinguished writer on 
medical jurisprudence informs us that "knowledge of the 
disease is half the cure ;" and if it be true, as perhaps it is, we 
think the " Standard" is in a fair way to be reclaimed from 
the enormous vices of pro-slavery statism. 

FREE LABOR MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH. 

Those of our readers avIio share with us the conviction 
that one of the very best means of ridding the South of the 
great crime and curse of slavery, is by a system of thorough 



388 



FACTS AND AEGTTMENT8 BY TUB WAYSIDE. 



organization on the part of a considerable number of indi- 
viduals, to bring Free Labor into direct competition with 
Forced Labor, will also share with us the profound satisfac- 
tion of learning, from the following communication, that the 
united efforts of gentlemen of noble instincts and purposes 
have been eminently successful in this regard ; and that the 
future is glowing with promises of grand results which are 
destined soon to be brought about through the energy and 
patriotism of such companies and corporations as the one in 
question : 



\ 



" Office of the American Emigrant Aid and Homestead Company, 
No. 146 Broadway, New York, June 9th, 1S59. 

"H. E. Helper, Esq.: 

"Dear Sir — In fulfillment of my promise, I will try to give you 
an outline of the object and operations of the American Emigrant 
Aid and Homestead Company. Your ' Impending Crisis ' has abun- 
dantly demonstrated the fact, that land in the Slave States is valued, 
purchased, and sold at prices many times less than the same quality 
of land will command in the Free States. It is likewise easy to show 
that, in the border Slave States, counties comparatively free are worth 
many times as much per acre as land of the same quality in counties 
cursed with the incubus of slavery. 

"In the little State of Delaware, containing only three counties, 
nearly all the slaves are found in the Southern county of Sussex, 
which by the last census was appraised at $8 per acre, while the 
Northern county of Newcastle, without slaves, was, by the same cen- 
sus, appraised at over $28 per acre. The fact above stated, is also 
very clearly shown by the statistics of the following counties in Vir- 
ginia: 



Name. 


Acres. 


Valuation. 


Value per Acre. 


Freemen. 


Slaves. 




49,739 
52,441 
59,781 
335,691 
156,988 


$1,181,512 

1,816,591 

2,025.951 

1,068,103 

■1 7,178 


$23 75 
25 10 
34 00 
3 oi 

2 Vii 


4,047 
5,023 

17,842 

7, Till'. 
1,854 


3 


Ohio 


31 
164 


Southampton, 


5,755 
3,785 









FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 389 

" It is worthy of note that the comparatively free counties here given 
are very hilly, far from tide water, and settled within the last fifty 
or sixty years, while the slave counties have a beautiful, gently roll- 
ing surface, lie near tide water, and the unequalled harbor of Nor- 
folk, and have had the advantage of cultivation for nearly two hundred 
years. The Homestead Company, looking at these tacts, proposes 
Christian colonization in the border Slave States, not by single or 
separate settlement, but by organized emigration, carrying with it all 
the schools, churches, habits of industry, social institutions, and ele- 
ments of a high civilization ; and thus, settling large tracts by united 
and sympathizing companies, of liberty and Union-loving men, their 
investments are quadrupled in value by the mere act of settlement. 
"We believe there is no department of human enterprise more bene- 
fited by system and cooperation than that of emigration. Our ex- 
perience has amply proved that this plan is not only profitable to all 
parties concerned as a financial operation, but that it furnishes the 
most feasible means of extending the Empire of Freedom and genuine 
Christianity, and is, in fact, one of the most inviting and beneficent 
enterprises of the age. We feel confident that our movement of 
concerted emigration has already demonstrated the truth of the pro- 
position, that freedom, like godliness, ' is profitable for the life that 
now is, as well as that which is to come ;' and that it has opened an 
easy, practicable, and profitable way to establish free institutions in 
all the border Slave States. 

" Our operations have been thus far confined principally to the 
State of Virginia, and the results to myself, have been highly gratify- 
ing. One of the outgrowths of our enterprise, has been the establish- 
ment of freedom of speech. During the last year I have been allowed 
a liberty of discussion on the subject of slavery, which, in 185 6 
would have demanded my blood or banishment. Indeed, in the 
towns of Western Virginia I have been serenaded, and invited to public 
entertainments, and to make addresses on that subject so lately pro- 
scribed, and scarcely breathed without incurring the penalty of exile 
or ostracism. We have now, in Western Virginia, three excellent 
weekly Republican papers, and one daily and tri-weekly, and we 
expect shortly to welcome several others to the ranks of freedom. 



390 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

These are but a few of the many encouraging results of our experi- 
ments. 

" In the cause of liberty and humanity, 
Yours truly, 

"John 0. Undebwood." 

As well might the Oligarchy attempt to stay the flux and 
reflux of the tides, as to attempt to stay the progress of Free- 
dom in the South. Approved of God, the edict of the genius of 
Universal Emancipation has been proclaimed to the world, and 
nothing save Deity himself, can possibly reverse it. To con- 
nive at the perpetuation of slavery is to disobey the com- 
mands of heaven. Not to be an Abolitionist, is to be a willful 
and diabolical instrument of the devil. The South needs to 
be free, the South wants to be free, the South shall be free. 

To all our readers, especially to our Southern readers, we 
cordially commend the following list of 

REPUBLICAN NEWSPAPERS PUBLISHED IN THE SLAVE STATES. 

ENGLISH. 

The Missouri Democrat St. Louis, Missouri. 

The Free Democrat St. Joseph, " 

The Wheeling Intelligencer Wheeling, Virginia. 

The Wellsburg Herald Wellsburg, " 

The Ceredo Crescent Ceredo, " 

The Pruntytown Visitor Pruntytown, " 

The Journal and Statesman Wilmington, Delaware. 

The Delaivare Republican " " 

The News and Advertiser Milford, " 

GERMAN. 

Der Anzeiger des Western St. Louis, Missouri. 

Die Westliche Post " " 

Das Hermann Wochenblatt Herrmann, " 

Der St. Charles Demokrat St. Charles, " 

Die Deutsche Zeitung St. Joseph, " 

Die Missouri Post Kansas City, " 

Der Lou.isvilkr Au-ciger Louisville, Kentucky. 

Der Baltimore Wicker Baltimore, Maryland. 



FACiS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 391 

Non-slaveholders of the South ! it is of the highest impor- 
tance to you that these papers should be well sustained, and 
that ample encouragement should be given for the establish- 
ment of others. Patronize as many of them as you can, consist- 
ently with your other duties and interests — subscribe for one at 
least — and lose no opportunity to extend their circulation 
among your neighbors. Just in proportion as the masses are 
enlightened will they love Liberty and abhor Slavery. 

The following extracts from Southern newspapers, and from 
the letters of Southern correspondents, will show that the 
glorious light of a better era has already begun to penetrate 
and dispel the portentous clouds of Slavery. The Wellsburg 
(Va.) w Herald," an independent weekly journal, referring to 
the vote of thirteen Democrats from that section, refusing, in 
the Virginia Legislature, in 1856, to appropriate money from 
the general treasury for the recapture of runaway slaves, 
says : 

" We presume these delegates in some degree represent their con- 
stituents, and we are thereby encouraged and built up in the confi- 
dence that there are other interests in Virginia to be seen to beside 
those pertaining to slavery." 

A non-slaveholcling Southron, in the course of a communi 
cation in a more recent number of the same paper, says : 

"We are taxed to support slavery. The clean cash goes out of 
our own pockets into the pockets of the slaveholder, and this in many 
ways. I will now allude to but two. If a slave, for crime, is put to 
death or transported, the owner is paid for him out of the public 
treasury, and under this law thousands are paid out every year. 
Again, a standing army is kept up in the city of Richmond for no 
other purpose than to be ready to quell insurrection among the 
slaves ; this is paid for out of the public treasury annually. This 
standing army is called the public guard, but it is no less a standing 
army always kept up. We will quote from the acts of 1856 the ex- 



392 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

pense of these two items to the State, on the 23d and 24th pages of 
the acts : ' To pay for slaves executed and transported, $22,000 ;' 'to 
the public guard at Richmond, $24,000.' This, be it noticed, is only 
for one year, making near $50,000 for these two objects in one year; 
but it can be shown by the present unequal plan of taxation between 
slave property and other property, that this is but a small item of 
our cash pocketed by the slaveholders* and yet some will say we 
have no reason to complain." 

The St. Louis " Democrat " talks thus boldly in favor of 
the abolition of slavery in Missouri : 

"Viewing the question as a subject of State policy, we will ven- 
ture to say that it is the grandest ever propounded to the people. 
If it were affirmed in a constitutional convention, and thoroughly 
carried out without any violation of vested rights, Missouri, in a few 
years subsequent to its consummation, would he the foremost Stato 
on the American continent. Population would flow in from all sides, 
were the barrier of negro-slavery once removed, and in place of 
80,000 slaves, we should have 800,000 white men, which, in addition 
to the population we would have at that time, would give us at onco 
an aggregate of two millions. 

"Is Missouri ambitious of political power ? — a power which is slip- 
ping away from the South. The mode of acquiring it is found. We 
are not rash enough to attempt a description of our condition if the 
element of Free Labor were introduced. The earth would give up its 
hidden treasures at its bidding as the sea will give up its dead ; and 
the soil would bloom more luxuriantly than if it drank the dews of 
Hermon nightly ; ten thousand keels would vex our rivers, towns 
along their banks would grow into cities, and St. Louis would soon 
unite in itself the attributes of the greatest commercial manufacturing 
and literary metropolis in the world. Let it be remembered that we 
have every inanimate element of wealth and power within our 
limits, and that we require only labor — free labor — for we need not 
say that servile labor is inadequate. . . . 

" There heed be no pernicious agitation, and even if there should, it 
is the penalty which we cannot avoid paying at some time ; and it is 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 393 

easier to pay it now, than in the future. Who that watches passing 
events and indications, is not sensible of the fact that great internal 
convulsions await the Slave States? Better to grapple with the 
danger in time, if danger there he, and avert it, than wait nntil it 
becomes formidable. One thing is certain, or history is no guide : 
that is, that Slavery cannot be perpetuated anywhere. An agitation 
now would be the effort of the social system to throw off a disease 
which had not touched its vitals ; hereafter it would be the struggle 
for life with a mortal sickness. But we do not apprehend any agita- 
tion more violent than has been forced upon us for years by the pro- 
slavery politicians. Agitating the slavery question has been their 
constant business, and nothing worse has resulted from it than their 
elevation to office — no very trifling evil, by the way — and the tem- 
porary subjugation of Kansas. 

" Besides, we know that all the Free States emancipated their 
slaves, and England and France theirs suddenly ; and we have yet to 
learn that a dangerous agitation arose in any instance." 

In reference to the mayoralty elections in St. Lonis, for the 
last four or five years, in which the Emancipation party have 
uniformly and gloriously triumphed, the Wheeling (Va.) 
" Intelligencer " says : 

" These elections do demonstrate this fact, beyond a cavil, that the 
sentiment of the great majority of the people of this Union is irre- 
vocably opposed to the extension of slavery ; that they are deter- 
mined, if overwhelming public sentiment can avail anything, another 
Slave State shall not be admitted into the confederacy. And why 
are they so determined ? Because they believe, and not only be- 
lieve, but see and know, that slavery is an unmitigated curse to the 
soil that sustains it. They know this, because they see every Free 
State outstripping every Slave State in all the elements that make a 
people powerful and prosperous ; because they see the people in the 
one educated and thrifty, and in the other ignorant and thriftless; 
because they have before their eyes a State like our own, once the 
very Union itself almost in importance, to-day taking her rank as a 
fifth rate power." 

IV 



894 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

How copies of this work itself, both of the original edition 
and of the Compendium, have been received by Southern Non- 
slaveholders, will appear from the following extracts from 
letters received from them, from time to time, as they could, 
without incurring too great risk or suspicion, prior to the 
present disturbed state of society in the South, avail them- 
selves of opportunities to write : 

A citizen of Richmond, Va., in a letter enthusiastically 
commending the book, says : 

" Before I had read fifty pages of the work, I exclaimed to a friend, 
' With a copy of this hook in the hands of every poor white man, I 
could revolutionize public opinion in ninety days.' But then a 
thought Sashed across my mind, leading me to inquire : "What effect 
would the work have on the 70,000 poor white men and women who 
cannot read ? It would he as a lamp in the hands of the hlind. In 
our cities, however, it is different. ATost of our people here in 
Eichmond, and in the other large towns in the State, can read, and, 
as we have much intercourse with the farmers, if the hook could be 
judiciously distributed throughout the country, I doubt not that it 
would engender a boldness of expression on the subject of slavery, 
out of which, in a short time, would come many daring and impas- 
sioned orators, who would, with utter fearlessness, go among the 
masses of the people, and, with the light of truth, dispel the darkness 
that now enshrouds them. 

" It is to slavery alone that Virginia owes the sad misfortune of 
having within her borders more grown men and women who cannot 
read than any other State in the Union. Eastern Virginia, where 
most of our uneducated people live, is, by having half a million of 
slaves, so sparsely populated by whites that but few can attend 
school, unless parents can afford to keep a horse for the sole purpose 
of taking their children to and from the school-house. This is the 
chief impediment, but there is another. The good land in Eastern 
Virginia — in fact, all the land bordering on the rivers — is in posses- 
sion of the slaveholders, while the great mass of the white popula- 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 395 

tion, the non-slaveholders, live on lands that give but meagre returns 
for the labor bestowed upon them. You are aware of the beautiful 
rivers that flow through our section of the State from the mountains 
to the Chesapeake, and of the magnificent harbors which indent our 
sea-coast ; and yet, sir, it is but truth to say that these wear the 
almost desolate appearance that they did in the day when the Cre- 
ator first bade them ebb and flow. 

""Why is it that the banks of our great rivers are not crowded 
with a dense, intelligent population, and adorned with cities and 
villages almost without number? "Why is it that we do not possess 
fleets of merchantmen and trade with all the world ? "Why is it that 
the State of New York, for which nature has not done half so much, 
is still so greatly our superior ? Sir, I can assign but one reason ; 
the answer is Slavery. Take our slave population, from childhood 
to old age, and they do not consume, on an average, more t\umjive 
dollars' worth of merchandise per annum ; while a free population 
will average at least twenty dollars per annum. In this view we 
have, in fact, the secret of the decay of Norfolk, once the chief sea- 
port of the United States. Four hundred thousand slaves could 
contribute no more, even if as much, to her commerce as could one 
hundred thousand freemen. Her vessels carried tobacco, flour and 
corn to Europe ; but, with their return cargoes, had to land at 
Northern cities, where the laborer was respected and acknowledged 
worthy of his hire, and where, in consequence, a thrifty population 
increased, and the demand for wares and merchandise became greater 
than anywhere existed at the South." 

The Rev. Daniel Worth, of North Carolina, a noble, staunch 
scion of the Saxon stock, who, at the very time we write, is 
imprisoned for circulating the book, said, in the course *of his 
correspondence antecedent to the date of his incarceration : 

" I am a minister in charge of Guilford Circuit of Wesleyan Metho- 
dists, North Carolina. I think you have some knowledge of our 
denomination. I am a native of Guilford County, but have resided 
some thirty-five years in the West. Last fall I returned to North 
Carolina, to remain and preach at least a year. I boldly preach 



396 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

Anti-Slavery from my pulpit. Various threats of mob violence have 
been made against me ; but I have the pleasing satisfaction of inform- 
ing you that thus far, in the performance of my duty, I have sus- 
tained no personal injury. Both myself and wife have numerous 
relations in Guilford and Eandolph Counties, which, joined to my 
age and Southern birth, has operated much in my favor 

"Returning from the west part of my circuit yesterday, I found 
your letter of the 12th inst., to which I hasten this reply. You are 
at perfect liberty to use my correspondence in any way you may 
judge best, as I am already committed at every place where I speak 
to the most open hostility to the system of human bondage. I have 
denounced it at every point, and especially its clerical supporters 
and apologists, with whatever of language and emphasis I could 
command. They deem me more plain, more caustic, than either of 
my predecessors, Crooks or McBride. If no danger results from my 
speech here, none need be apprehended from the publication of my 
letters. The Boston Tract letter, reprinted in the snivelling, servile, 
little ' Day Book,' which you sent me, went the rounds of the 
North Carolina press. From it sprang much angry, excited discus- 
sion, and one challenge for a duel. This was given by the editor of 
the Fayetteville ' Carolinian' to the editor of the Salisbury ' Watch- 
man.' Considerable ink was shed, but no blood. Continued refer- 
ence was made to me in these newspaper missiles, as the 'Reverend 
writer of the Boston Tract letter,' or 'the Reverend gentleman sup- 
posed to be the author of the Boston Tract letter ;' and though 
every one knew to whom these references pointed, I am not certain 
tl i at my name has been once given in a Carolina paper 

"I think the 'Impending Crisis' should be extensively circulated 
in this poor old slavery-cursed State, and I am willing to take the 
responsibility of putting it in circulation to the extent of my travel. 
It is highly probable that a North Carolina court might deem the 
book incendiary, but I am willing to risk the result. The facts the 
book contains should be generally known 

" I have disposed of the fifty copies of the ' Impending Crisis,' 
which I brought with me from the city last fall, and want more ; 
please send me forty additional copies. . . . Our success in 
spreading the principles of Freedom has been beyond my most san- 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 397 

guine expectations I am particularly surprised that no 

excitement has followed the distribution of the book. Formerly, 
IfcBride, my predecessor here in the ministry, was prosecuted and 
convicted for vending a single sheet to prove slavery inconsistent 
with the Ten Commandments, and now I am suffered quietly to 
scatter broadcast the ' Impending Crisis' over this whole community. 
And the onslaught I make from the pulpit on slavery is said to be 
far more severe than the words of my predecessor ; yet slaveholders, 
even, bear it with all the patience of a Job. ... I first began 
to vend the work privately, but soon throwing off all concealment, 
I did it as publicly as a Yankee peddler would sell a tin hair-comb. 
. . . . If a prosecution were instituted against me, I would read 
in my defence before a jury every syllable of the book, making the 
necessary comments. . . The gentleman to whom I referred some 

time since was Mr. , of Greensboro', well known in that place 

as an anti-slavery man. His remark was this: 'When the first copies 
of the " Crisis" reached Greensboro', such was the anxiety to learn 
its contents that the citizens would gather in clubs of some fifteen 
or twenty, on Sunday afternoons, and one would read, and the others 
would listen, and so deep was the interest to hear that,' he continued, 
facetiously, 'I feared it would soon supplant the Bible!' " 

One of the most worthy Quaker residents of Guilford 
County, North Carolina, writes as follows : 

" Ignorance perpetuates slavery, and slavery perpetuates ignorance. 
In our schools, academies and other institutions of learning, only cer- 
tain kinds of books are allowed to be used. From our pulpits only 
certain texts of Scripture are allowed to be preached, and from our 
rostrums only certain kinds of political speeches are allowed to be 
made. 

"The manner in which the children of the slaveholder are brought 
up is known to be loose ; and to the male portion, in particular, in- 
ducements to vice ever open at their own doors, of a character not 
to be spoken of, yet of direful consequences. The females are reared 
in idleness and supineness, which disqualify them for the active 
duties of life, and otherwise greatly impair their mental and physical 



398 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

constitutions — so that it is impossible for them to exercise, freely and 
fully, the natural moral influences which are necessary for the well- 
being of society. 

" The lack of means of education for the lower classes of the white 
population is a most serious disadvantage ; and, what is worse still, 
it is the policy and practice of slaveholders to throw every po 
obstacle in the way of overcoming the evil. . . . The children 
of the wealthy imbibe so many low ideas, and acquire so many vul- 
garisms of language, from their early association with negro slaves, 
that it takes almost a whole lifetime to get rid of them. These 
things, taken in connection with the idle habits and boisterous dispo- 
sition engendered by the every-day experiences passing before their 
eves, render them an easy prey to intemperance, lust and violence. 
. . . To insure success in business, it is necessary that the opera- 
tor should think as well as work ; but, here in the South, those who 
are considered entitled to do the thinking are too proud to do the 
work, while those who are compelled to do the work are scarcely 
allowed to think at all ; and, as a consequence, we work like balky 
hoi-ses, without concert of action, and get but little done." 

A resident of Botetourt County, in Virginia, writes as fol- 
]<>\vs: 

" Wherever African slavery exists to any considerable extent in 
Virginia and further South, it has laid the foundation of a high-toned 
aristocracy, which creates a distaste for labor, for the reason that it 
is the duty of slaves to work ; and thus is drawn an unhappy line of 
distinction between the rich and the poor. Hence the impossibility 
of adopting a system of general education. Hence the large per- 
centage of native ignorance which we have in the Slave States. 

"in amoral and social point of view, we are more seriously af- 
fected. In early life our white children are always more or less as- 
bed with the blacks, from whom they learn many rude and vul- 
gar habits. Tims, poor, ignorimt negro slaves become (in part at 
least) tin' instructors of our children, and this, too, at an age in 
which the minds of the latter are most susceptible of gross supersti- 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 399 

tions. There are probably thousands of aged white persons now 
living whose minds are still haunted with horrible ghost stories 
which, in childhood, they heard from colored nurses and black play- 
mates. 

" In Virginia, such is our loyalty to slavery that, if an ultra-Abo- 
litionist, who contends for amalgamation, were to come among us, 
and advocate his theory, he would certainly, to say the least, get a 
coat of tar and feathers ; but, when we look at the face of society, 
it is demonstrable, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that we have 
practical amalgamationists by the score. In some of our towns and 
villages, more than half flie colored population are of mixed Mood; 
and such is the state of things, to a greater or less extent, throughout 
the entire South, as far as I have travelled. Thus, in this respect, 
truth compels me to make the humiliating concession, that Virginia 
practice is worse than Massachusetts theory. . . . 

" You see, then, how we are cursed with an illegitimate, adulte- 
rous population — the offspring of free men born in slavery— from 
whom the privileges of education and legal matrimony are withheld. 
. . . Thousands of the slaves of this State are of a mixed race, 
the sons and daughters of white fathers. ... To remedy the 
sad consequences of this leprous sore upon the body politic, the ex- 
ertions of the wise and good should at once be called forth. 

"In a material point of view, we are also most disadvantageous^ 
affected by African slavery. In proof of this, we need only look at 
the idleness of a large portion of our white population, the cheerless 
condition of our wasted lands, the very low price of real estate, the 
unimportance of our commerce, and our absolute dependence on the 
North for manufactured fabrics. 

" There are also positive grievances under which a large majority 
of the free white men of Virginia are laboring ; and to these I desire 
to call attention. When a slave commits murder, and is condemned to 
be hung, the law, made by and for slaveholders, authorizes the court 
to award compensation to the owner, to be paid out of the State 
Treasury. Therefore, every person who pays State tax shares the 
burden. Under the operation of this law, A. can have a thievish slave, 
who steals pigs or other property from his neighbor B., who has the 
slave arrested, tried and whipped. The slave then seeks revenge by 



400 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY TIIE WAYSIDE. 

burning B.'s barn or dwelling, or by taking bis life. The slave is 
again arrested, tried, found guilty, and sentence of death passed upon 
him ; and the court, according to law, pays A. out of the State Tre- 
suiy, for liis thievish and murderous slave, and our courts are gene- 
rally liberal on such occasions, and allow a high price for the chattel, 
notwithstanding he thus proves to be, in reality, a thousand times 
worse than worthless. But the worst feature of this law is yet to lie- 
told. As tax-payers, the widow and orphans of the murdered hus- 
band and father are compelled to help to pay for the very slave who 
murdered him!" 

In the course of a very long letter, an Anti-slavery friend, 
who resides in one of the southwestern counties of North 
Carolina says : 

" I am not in the habit of going from home only on public occa- 
sions, such as court and election days, and am consequently not 
notorious as a public man. In one sense, however, I have become 
notorious, and that was when I sent for six copies of 'The Crisis.' 
One of these, a friend borrowed, and a neighbor of his, seeing it lying 
upon his table, requested the loan of it, which was granted. This 
man carried the book with him to his store, and it was there seen 
and read by all who were so inclined. It was not long before it was 
generally known that I had sent for 'abolition books, 1 and distributed 
them; and several of the leading citizens of our town, together with 
a number of lickspittles who have no interest whatever in slaves, 
held a grave council, in order to determine what should be done with 
me, for having, as they charged, violated an act of Assembly, made to 
prevent and to punish the circulation of incendiary publications cal- 
culated to incite the negroes to insurrection. Some insisted that I 
should be arrested in the night, carried to jail, and there kept to 
answer at the Supreme Court an indictment for the infamous pro- 
ceeding above named. Others said ' Wait a while and we shall have 
more testimony against him.' It was also decided that the judge 
should he informed of the necessity of charging the grand jury, espe- 
cially upon offences of this sort. 

"All this was communicated to me by a friend : and although I felt 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 401 

conscious that I had violated no law, and entertained no criminal in- 
tent, yet I felt somewhat uneasy, lost the fanatics should get me into 
trouble, which no doubt they would have done, and, moreover, would 
have gladly seen me compelled to submit to an ignominious punish- 
ment, if they could have found anything upon which to base an 
action. I was apprehensive of evil, and attended the first day of the 
court, in order to hear the charge of the judge to the grand jury, 
fully expecting that he would charge them strictly to take cognizance 
of that class of transgressions ; but he never even alluded to the sub- 
ject, and in this, I confess, I was somewhat disappointed. Indeed, I 
had a sort of secret wish to test the question : Whether the freedom 
of the press, and the free expression of opinion, are things of the 
past, or whether they exist and have a value in North Carolina. 

" I am aware that I have lost the good will and esteem of many 
whom I once regarded as friends. Three of my neighbors in particu- 
lar, have openly declared that they will no longer hold friendly in- 
tercourse with me, 'because, 1 as one of them expressed himself, 'the 
d — d rascal has been circulating "Abolition books." ' I mention this 
merely to show the feeling that exists here among those who are 
regarded as the ruling class, and that it is no small matter for a man 
circumstanced as I am, to do anything which they believe to be 
hostile to slavery. I confess, dear sir, that at times, I almost despair of 
ever seeing the principles and policy so ably set forth in ' The Ci•isis, , 
adopted and carried into successful operation in the South, and the 
reason is the want of intelligence among the great mass of non-slave- 
holders, and the actual stupidity and indifference which too many 

plainly manifest I must bring my letter to a close by 

suggesting to you the propriety of my addressing you hereafter under 
an assumed name. I fear that the jealousy and suspicion of the pro- 
slavery fanatics, among whom is the postmaster at this place, may 
lead them to intercept our correspondence." 

Writing from Orange County, North Carolina (his native 
place), a correspondent says : 

" The advocates of slavery have monopolized the means of educa- 
tion among us ; all the institutions of learning of the higher class are 



402 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

filled with students -who are, or soon expect to he, owners of slaves. 
I reside not far from Ohapel Hill, the University of the State ; and 
among the hundreds who have graduated from that college, I scarcely 
know oue who was not an advocate of slavery. During the late 
Presidential contest, one of the Professors was dismissed for 
merely expressing a preference for the election of the Republican 
candidate. 

" All the students are taught that slavery is of divine origin, and 
that it is their duty, as citizens, Christians and patriots, to defend 
and retain it. In the meantime, the great mass of poor whites go 
with but little schooling, and hence the great lack of mental activity 
among the larger portion of the population of North Carolina, and 
of the South generally. . . . Those who own slaves must neces- 
sarily lay aside all pure morality and religion, in order to manage 
them to pecuniary advantage. 

"In 1848, I assisted in getting up what was called a Free Soil 
ticket for President, and we were threatened with persecution if we 
voted it. Through the mental darkness above mentioned, many 
friends of the ticket were deterred from voting. I think it was dur- 
ing the next year, or at least not long after, that an anti-slavery 
preacher, by the name of Jesse McBride, was seized by a mob in 
Guilford County, adjoining this, and taken out by force — the county 
attorney, whose duty it was, in accordance with his oath, to return 
and prosecute all offences against the law, having headed the mob ! 
And this palpable and disgraceful violation of law has never been 
mentioned in court up to this day ! Such are the morals and patri- 
otism that slavery disseminates. 

" There are two important points relating to slavery, which writers 
on the subject too often overlook. According to one of our North 
Carolina statutes, if a slave is on trial for a capital offence, a free- 
holder, who is not a slave7iolder, is not allowed to sit on the jury ; 
consequently a white man who cannot always afford to send an 
escort of protectors with his daughters, when they necessarily have 
to go from home, is liable to have them insulted, and even murdered, 
and his equals dare not sit on a jury to jinlne the cause; but slave- 
In filers, who know the value of negroes, and are sometimes not over 
willing to lose them, must decide it. Thus you perceive that, under 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 403 

the laws of this State, negro slaves are much less liable to he hung 
for rapes and murders than white men. I have frequently heard it, 
publicly proclaimed, before a trial of this kind, that if the slave was 
cleared, he was to be run off and sold, and the price thus saved to 
his owner. This statute touches many sorely, who would otherwise 
truckle to the system for the countenance and approbation of the 
governing class. Our statute also provides that, in case of insurrec- 
tion, three Justices of the Peace may call out the militia. The ques- 
tion then arises, "Who are the militia ? There is certainly not more 
than one slaveholder in fifty militiamen ; consequently, the men who 
have no earthly interest in slavery (only that it should cease to ex- 
ist) must leave their families entirely unprotected, and risk their 
own lives in the settlement of dangers in which they are involved by 
slaves and slaveowners. ... A warfare with intelligence is 
an easy task, but with ignorance and cupidity it is indeed to be 
dreaded." 

TIIE ILLITERATE POOR WHITES OF THE SOUTH. 

Had we the power to sketch a true picture of life among 
the non-slaveholding whites of the South, every intelligent 
man who lias a spark of philanthropy in his breast, and who 
should happen to gaze upon the picture, would burn with un- 
quenchable indignation at that system of African slavery, 
which entails unutterable stupidity, shiftlessness and degra- 
dation on the superior race. It is quite impossible, however, 
to describe accurately the miserable condition of the class to 
which « r e refer. Their poverty, their ignorance and their 
comparative nothingness, as a power in the State, are de- 
plorable in the extreme. The serfs of Russia have reason to 
congratulate themselves that they are neither the negroes nor 
the non-slaveholding whites of the South. Than the latter 
there can be no people in Christendom more unhappily situ- 
ated. Below will be found a few extracts which will throw 
some light on the subject now under consideration. 



404 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

In an address Avkich he delivered before the South Carolina 
Institute, in 1851, William Gregg says: 

"From the best estimates that I have been able to make, I put 
down the white people who ought to work, and who do not, or who 
are so employed as to be wholly unproductive to the State, at one 
hundred and twenty-five thousand. Any man who is an observer 
of things could hardly pass through our country without being struck 
with the fact, that all the capital, enterprise and intelligence, is em- 
ployed in directing slave labor ; and the consequence is, that a large 
portion of our poor white people are wholly neglected, and are suf- 
fered to while away an existence in a state but one step in advance 
of the Indian of the forest. It is an evil of vast magnitude, and 
nothing but a change in public sentiment will effect its cure. These 
people must be brought into daily contact with the rich and intelli- 
gent — they must be stimulated to mental action, and taught to appre- 
ciate education and the comforts of civilized life ; and this, we be- 
lieve, may be effected only by the introduction of manufactures. My 
experience at Graniteville has satisfied me that unless our poor peo- 
ple can be brought together in villages, and some means of employ- 
ment afforded them, it will be an utterly hopeless effort to undertake 
to educate them. "We have collected at that place about eight hun- 
dred people, and as likely looking a set of country girls as may be 
found — industrious and orderly people — but deplorably ignorant, 
three-fourths of the adults not being able to read or to write their 
own names. 

"It is only necessary to build a manufacturing village of shanties, 
in a healthy location, in any part of the State, to have crowds of 
these people around you, seeking employment at half the compensa- 
tion given to operatives at the North. It is indeed painful to be 
brought in contact with such ignorance and degradation." 

Again, he asks : 

"Shall we pass unnoticed the thousands of poor, ignorant, de- 
graded white people among us, who, in this land of plenty, live in 
comparative nakedness and starvation? Many a one is reared in 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 405 

proud South Carolina, from birtli to manhood, who has never passed 
a month in which he has not, some part of the time, been stinted for 
meat. Many a mother is there who will tell you that her children 
are but scantily provided with bread, and much more scantily with 
meat ; and, if they be clad with comfortable raiment, it is at the ex- 
pense of these scanty allowances of food. These may be startling 
statements, but they are nevertheless true ; and if not believed in 
Charleston, the members of our legislature who have traversed the 
State in electioneering campaigns, can attest the truth." 

In an article on "Manufactures in South Carolina," published 
some time ago in "De Bow's Review," J. II. Taylor, of 

Charleston (S. C.) says : 

" There is in some quarters, a natural jealousy of the slightest in- 
novation upon established habits, and because an effort has been 
made to collect the poor and unemployed white population into our 
new factories, fears have arisen that some evil woidd grow out of the 
introduction of such establishments among us. . . . Tbe poor 
man has a vote as well as the rich man, and in our State the number 
of the former will largely overbalance the latter. So long as these 
poor but industrious people can see no mode of living except by a 
degrading operation of work with the negro upon the plantation, 
they will be content to endure life in its most discouraging forms, 
satisfied that they are above the slave, though faring often worse 
than he." 

Speaking j n favor of manufactures in Georgia, the Hon. J. 
II. Lumpkin, of that State, says : 

•' It is objected that these manufacturing establishments will be- 
come the hotbeds of crime. But I am by no means ready to concede 
that our poor, degraded, half-fed, half-clothed, and ignorant popu- 
lation — Avithout Sabbath Schools, or any other kind of instruction, 
mental or moral, or without any just appreciation of character — will 
be injured by giving them employment, which will bring them under 
the oversight of employers, who will inspire them with self-respect 
by taking an interest in their welfare." 



406 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

In a paper on the extension of cotton and woollen factories 
at the South, Mr. Steadman, of Tennessee, says: 

"In Lowell, labor is paid the fair compensation of 80 cents a day 
for men, and $2 a week for women, beside board, while in Tennessee 
the average compensation for labor does not exceed 50 cents per day 
for men, and $1 25 per week for women." 

In the course of a speech which he delivered in Congress 
several years ago, Mr. T. L. Clingman, of North Carolina, 
said: 

" Our manufacturing establishments can obtain the raw material 
(cotton) at nearly two cents on the pound cheaper than the New 
England establishments. Labor is likewise one hundred per cent, 
cheaper. In the upper parts of the State, the labor of either a free 
man or a slave, including board, clothing, etc., can be obtained for 
from $110 to $120 per annum. It will cost at least twice that sum 
in New England. The difference in the cost of female labor, whether 
free or slave, is even greater." 

The Richmond (Va.) "Dispatch," says: 

u AYe will only suppose that the ready-made shoes imported into 
this city from the North, and sold here, were manufactured in Rich- 
mond. What a great addition it would be to the means of employ- 
ment ! How many boys and females would find the means of earn- 
ing their bread, who are now suffering for a regular supply of the 
necessaries of life." 

A citizen of New Orleans, writing in " De Bow's Review," 
says: 

"At present the sources of employment open to females (save in 
menial offices) are very limited ; and an inability to procure suitable 
occupation is an evil much to be deplored, as tending in its conse- 
quences to produce demoralization. The superior grades of female 
labor may be considered such as imply a necessity for education on 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 407 

the part of the employee, while the menial class is generally regarded 
as of the lowest ; and in a Slave State, this standard is ' in the lowest 
depths, a lower deep,' from the fact that, by association, it is a re- 
duction of the white servant to the level of their colored fellow- 
menials." 

Black slave labor, though far less. valuable, is almost inva- 
riably better paid than free white labor. The reason is this : 
the fiat of the oligarchy has made it fashionable to " have 
negroes around," and there are, we are grieved to say, many 
non-slaveholding white sycophants, who, in order to retain 
on their premises a hired slave whom they falsely imagine 
secures to them not only the appearance of wealth, but also a 
position of high social standing in the community, keep them- 
selves in a perpetual strait. 

In the spring of 1856, we made it our special business to 
ascertain the ruling rates of wages paid for labor, free and 
slave, in North Carolina. We found sober, energetic white 
men, between twenty and forty years of age, engaged in 
agricultural pursuits at a salary of $7 per month — including 
board only ; negro men, slaves, who perform little more than 
half the amount of labor, and who were exceedingly sluggish, 
awkward, and careless in all their movements, were hired out 
on adjoining firms, at an average of about $10 per month, 
including board, clothing, and medical attendance. Free 
white men and slaves were in the employ of the North Caro- 
lina Railroad Company ; the former, whose services, in our 
opinion, were at least twice as valuable as the latter, received 
only $12 per month each ; the masters of the latter received 
$16 per month for every slave so employed. Industrious, 
tidy white girls, from sixteen to twenty years of age, had 
much difficulty in hiring themselves out as domestics in pri- 
vate families for $40 per annum — hoard only included ; negro 
wenches, slaves, of corresponding ages, so ungraceful, stupid 



408 FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

and filthy, that no decent man would ever permit one of them 
to cross the threshold of his dwelling, were in brisk demand 
at from $65 to $70 per annum, including victuals, clothes, 
and medical attendance. These are facts, and in considering 
them, the students of political and social economy will not fail 
to arrive at conclusions of their own. 

Notwithstanding the greater density of population in the 
Free States, labor of every kind is, on an average, about one 
hundred per cent, higher there than it is in the Slave States. 
This is another important fact, and one that every non-slave- 
holding white should keep registered in his mind. 

Poverty, ignorance, and superstition, are the three leading 
characteristics of the non-slaveholding whites of the South. 
Many of them grow up to the age of maturity, and pass 
through life without ever owning as much as five dollars at a 
time. Thousands of them die at an advanced age, as ignorant 
of the common alphabet as if it had never been invented. All 
are more or less impressed with a belief in witches, ghosts, 
and supernatural signs. Few are exempt from habits of sen- 
suality and intemperance. None have anything like adequate 
ideas of the duties which they owe either to their God, to 
themselves, or to their fellow-men. Pitiable, indeed, in the 
fullest sense of the term, is their condition. 

It is the almost utter lack of an education that has reduced 
them to their present unenviable situation. In the entire 
South there is scarcely a publication of any kind devoted to 
their interests. They are now completely under the domina- 
tion of the oligarchy, and it is madness to suppose that they 
will ever be able to rise to a position of true manhood, until 
after the Slave Power shall have been utterly overthrown. 



CHAPTER XII. 

SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

Here's Freedom to them that would read, 

Here's Freedom to them that would write, 
There's none ever feared that the truth should be heard. 

But they whom the truth would indict. 
May Liberty meet with success, 

May Prudence protect it from evil, 
May tyrants and tyranny tine in their mist, 

And wander their way to the devil ! 

Burns. 

Write, speak, avenge, for ancient sufferings feel, 
Impale each tyrant on your pens of steel, 
Declare how freemen can a world create, 
And slaves and masters ruin every State. 

Baelow. 

The plantations of the South are graveyards of the mind ; the inexpressive 
countenances of the slaves are monuments of souls expired ; and their spiritless 
eyes are their epitaphs.— Thome.* 

It is Avith some degree of hesitation that we add a chapter 
on Southern Literature — not that the theme is inappropriate 
to this work ; still less, that it is an unfruitful one ; but our 
hesitation results from our conscious inability, in the limited 
time and space at our command, to do the subject justice, 
Few, except those whose experience has taught them, have 
any adequate idea of the amount of preparatory labor requi- 
site to the production of a work into which the statistical 

* Rev. James A. Thome, a native of Kentucky. 
18 



410 SOUTHERN LITEBA.THEE. 

element largely enters ; especially is this so, when the statis- 
tics desired are not readily accessible through public and offi- 
cial documents. The author who honestly aims at entire 
accuracy in his statements, may find himself baffled for weeks 
in his pursuit of a single item of information, not of much 
importance in itself perhaps, when separately considered, but 
necessary in its connection with others, to the completion .of 
a harmonious whole. Not unfrequently, during the prepara- 
tion of the preceding pages," have we been subjected to this 
delay and annoyance. 

The following brief references to the protracted preparatory 
labors and inevitable delays to which authors are subjected, 
may interest our readers, and induce them to regard with 
charity any deficiencies, either in detail or in general arrange- 
ment, whirl), owing to the necessary haste of preparation, 
these concluding pages of our work may exhibit. 

Goldsmith was engaged nine years in the preparation of 
" The Traveller," and five years in gathering and arranging 
the incidents of his " Deserted Village," and two years in 
their versification. 

Bancroft, the American Historian, has been more than 
thirty years engaged upon his " History of the United States,'' 
from his projection of the work to the present date ; and that 
History is not yet completed. 

Hildreth, a no less eminent historian, from the time he 
began to collect materials for his " History of the United 
States" to the date of its completion, devoted no less than 
twenty-five years to the work. 

Webster, our great lexicographer, gave thirty-five years 
of his life in bringing his " Unabridged Dictionary of the Eng- 
lish Language" to the degree of accuracy and completeness in 
which we now find it. 

Dr. John W. Mason, after ten years' labor in the accumu- 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 411 

lation of materials for a Life of Alexander Hamilton, was 
compelled to relinquish the work on account of impaired 
health. 

Mr. James Banks, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, who 
recently delivered a lecture upon the Life and Character of 
Flora McDonald, was eighteen years in the collection of his 
materials. 

Oulibicheft* a distinguished Russian author, sj)ent twenty- 
five years in writing the Life of Mozart. 

Examples of this kind might be multiplied to an almost 
indefinite extent. Indeed, almost all the poets, prose- 
writers, painters, sculptors, composers, and other devotees 
of Art, who have won undying fame for themselves, have 
done so through long years of earnest and almost uninter- 
mitted toil. 

We are quite conscious that the fullness and accuracy of 
statement which are desirable in this chapter cannot be 
attained in the brief time allowed its for its completion ; but, 
though much will necessarily be omitted that ought to bo 
said, we shall endeavor to make no statement of facts which 
are not well authenticated, and no inferences from the same 
which are not logically true. We can only promise to do 
the best in our power, with the materials at our command, to 
exhibit the inevitable influences of slavery upon Southern 
Literature, and to demonstrate that the accursed institution 
so cherished by the oligarchy, is no less prejudicial to our 
advancement in letters, than it is destructive of our material 
prosperity. 

What is the actual condition of Literature at the South ? 
Our question includes more than simple authorship in the 
various departments of letters, from the compilation of a 
primary reader to the production of a Scientific or Theologi- 
cal Treatise. We comprehend in it all the activities engaged 



412 SOUTHERN LITEEATUEE. 

in the creation, publication, and sale of books and periodicals, 
from the penny primer to the heavy folio, and from the dingy, 
coarse-typed weekly paper, to the large, well-filled daily. 

It would be unjust to deny a degree of intellectual activity 
to the South. It has produced a few good authors — a few 
competent editors, and a moderately large number of clever 
magazinists, paragraphists, essayists and critics. Absolutely, 
then, it must be conceded that the South has something that 
may be called a literature; it is only when we speak of her 
in comparison with the North, that Ave say, with a pardona- 
bly strong expression, " The South has no literature." This 
was virtually admitted by more than one speaker at the late 
Southern Slaveholders' Convention at Savannah. Said a 
South Carolina orator on that occasion : " It is important 
that the South should have a literature of her own, to defend 
her principles and her rights ;" a sufficiently plain concession 
that she has not, now, such a literature. But facts speak 
more significantly than the rounded periods of Convention 
orators. Let us look at fi\cts, then. 

First, turning our attention to the periodical literature of 
the South, we obtain these results: By the census of 1850, 
Ave ascertain that the entire number of periodicals, daily, 
semi-Aveekly, Aveekly, semi-monthly, monthly and quarterly, 
published in the Slave States, including the District of Co- 
lumbia, were seven hundred and twenty-two. These had an 
aggregate yearly circulation of ninety-tAvo million one hun- 
dred and sixty-seven thousand one hundred and twenty-nine. 
(92,167,129). The number of periodicals of eA r ery class, pub- 
lished in the non-slaveholding States (exclusive of California) 
was one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three, with an 
aggregate yearly circulation of three hundred and thirty- 
three million three hundred and eighty-six thousand and 
eighty-one. (333,386,081). 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 413 

We are aware that there may be inaccuracies in the fore- 
going estimates ; but the compilers of the census, not we, are 
responsible for them. Besides, the figures are unquestionably 
as fair for the South as for the North ; we accept them, 
therefore, as a just basis of our comparisons. Ten years have 
elapsed since these statistics were taken, and these ten years 
have wrought an immense change in the journalism of the 
North, without any corresponding change in that of the 
South. It is noteworthy that, as a general thing, the prin- 
cipal journals of the free States are more comprehensive in 
their scope, more complete in every department, and enlist, 
if not a higher order of talent, at least more talent, than they 
did ten years ago. This improvement extends not only to 
the metropolitan, but to the country papers also. In fact, 
the very highest literary ability, in finance, in political eco- 
nomy, in science, in statism, in law, in theology, in medicine, 
in the belles-lettres, is laid under contribution by the journals 
of the non-slaveholding States. This is true only to a very 
limited degree of Southern journals. Their position, with 
but few exceptions, is substantially the same that it was ten 
years ago. They are neither worse nor better — the imbe- 
cility and inertia which attaches to everything which slavery 
touches, clings to them now as tenaciously as it did when 
Henry A. Wise thanked God for the paucity of newspapers 
in the Old Dominion, and the platitudes of Father Ritchie 
were recognized as the political gospel of the South. They 
have not, so far as we can learn, increased materially in 
number, nor in the aggregate of their yearly circulation. In 
the free States no week passes that does not add to the num- 
ber of their journals, and extend the circle of their readers 
and their influence. Since the census tables to which we 
have referred were prepared, two of the many excellent 
weekly journals of which the city of New York can boast, 



414 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 



have sprung into being, and attained an aggregate circulation 
more than twice as large as that of the entire newspaper press 
of Virginia in 1850 — and exceeding, by some thousands, the 
aggregate circulation of the two hundred and fifty journals 
of which Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Georgia, North 
Carolina and Florida could boast at the time above-men- 
tioned. 

Facts of great interest and importance appertaining to 
the two most widely circulated and influential journals in 
America — perhaps we might, with propriety, say in the world 
— will be found in the following carefully-prepared tabular 
statement : 

TABLE 35. 

AGGREGATE CIRCULATION OF THE DAILY, SEMI-WEEKLY, AND WEEKLY 
NEW YORK TKEBUNE* APRIL 10, 1S60, AND OP THE DAILY NEW YORK 
HERALD,t AUGUST 2, 1S56. 



FKEE STATES. 


Tribune. 


Herald. 


SLAVE STATES. 


Tribune. 


11,- aid. 


California, 

Connecticut, 

Massachusetts,.. 

Minnesota, 

N. Hampshire, . 
New Jersey, .... 

New York, 

Ohio, 


7,396 
9,822 

15,(170 

13,639 

11,579 

10,088 

10,704 

111,620 

3,927 

7,347 

6,555 

93,547 

25,949 

864 

27,104 

2.245 

9,332 

12,173 


1 
2,146 
858 
36 
49 
58 
1,058 
256 

139 

8,330 

47,275 

200 

2,510 
322 
135 j 
38 


Arkansas, . . . 

District of ('.,. 
Florida, 

Georgia, 

Kentucky, .... 
Louisiana, 

Maryland, 

Mississippi 

Missouri, 

N. Carolina, . . 
S. Carolina,. . . 
Tennessee, . . . 


50 

261 
206 

7 
31 

3S6 

-1 
555 

22 

1,1 I.V.I 

68 
26 

264 
89 

390 


SO 

£35 
817 
45 

170 

68 

85 

1,153 

.11 
41 
44 

139 
4-2 


Peiinsyh ania,. . . 
Rhode Island,. . . 

Wisconsin, 


5 

170 




277,961 


58,410 




3,501 


2,611 



* See The Tribune of April, 10, 1S60. 



t See The Herald of August 6, 1856. 



Note. — For the enlarged edition of this work, brought out in May, 1S60, the author 
made special application at the office of the Herald for later statistics in regard to its 
circulation, but, after several days' delay, was Finally refused the desired information. 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 415 

Throughout the non-slaveholding States, the newspaper or 
magazine that has not improved during the last decade of 
years, is an exception to the general rule. Throughout the 
entire slaveholding States, the newspaper or magazine that 
has improved during that time, is no less an exception to the 
general mile that there obtains. Outside of the larger cities 
of the South, there are not, probably, half a dozen newspapers 
in the whole slaveholding region that can safely challenge a 
comparison with the country-press of the North. What that 
country-press was twenty-years ago, the country-press of the 
South is now. 

We do not deny that the South has produced able journal- 
ists ; and that some of the newspapers of her principal cities 
exhibit a degree of enterprise and talent that cannot fail to 
command for them the respect of all intelligent men. But 
these journals, we regret to say, are marked exceptions to 
the general condition of the Southern press ; and even the 
best of these fall far below the standard of excellence attained 
by the leading journals of the North. In fact, whether our 
comparison embraces quantity only, or extends to both 
quantity and quality, it is found to be immeasurably in favor 
of the non-slaveholding States, which in journalism, as in all 
other industrial pursuits, leave their slavery-cursed com- 
petitors at an infinite distance behind them, and thus vindi- 
cate the superiority of free institutions, which, recognizing 
labor as honorable, secure its rewards for all. 

The literary vassalage of the South to the North consti- 
tutes in itself a most significant commentary upon the dia- 
tribes of the former concerning " a purely Southern litera- 
ture." To begin at the beginning — the Alphabetical Blocks 
and Educational tables from which our Southern abecedarian 
takes his initial lesson, were projected and manufactured in 
the North. Going forward a step, we find the youngling 



416 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

intent in spelling short sentences, or gratifying his juvenile 
fondness for the fine arts by copying tlie wood-cuts from his 
Northern primer. Yet another step, and we discover him 
with his " Sanders' Reader," his "Mitchell's Geography," his 
"Emerson's Arithmetic," all produced by Northern mind 
and Northern enterprise. There is nothing wrong in this ; 
it is only a little ridiculous in view of the fulminations of the 
Southern pro-slavery press against the North. Occasionally 
however we are amused by the efforts of the oligarchs to 
make their own school-books, or to root out of all educational 
text books every reference to the pestilential heresy of free- 
dom. A gentleman in Charleston, S. C, is devoting his 
energies to the preparation of a series of pro-slavery elemen- 
tary Avorks, consisting of primers, readers, etc., and lo ! they 
are all printed, stitched and bound north of Mason and 
Dixon's line ! A single fact like this is sufficient to overturn 
whole folios of theory concerning the divinity of slavery. The 
truth is, that, not school-books alone, but works of almost 
every class produced by the South, depend upon Northern 
enterprise and skill for their introduction to the public. 
Mr. De Bow, the eminent Statistician, publishes a " Southern 
Review," purporting to be issued from New Orleans. It is 
printed and bound in the city of New York. "We clip the 
following paragraph from a recent number of the Vicksburgh 
(Miss.) " Whig :" 

" Southerx Exterphise. — Even the Mississippi Legislature, at its 
late session allowed its laws to go to Boston to be printed, and made 
an appropriation of $3,000 to pay one of its members to go there and 
read the proof sheets instead of having it done in the State, and 
thereby assisting in building up a Southern publishing house. What 
a commentary on the Yankee-haters!" 

The Greensboro (N. C.) "Patriot" thus records a similar 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 417 

contribution, on the part of that State, to " the creation of 
a purely Southern Literature:" 

" We have heard it said, that those who had the control of the 
printing of the revised Statutes of North Carolina,* in order to save 
a few dimes, had the work executed in Boston, in preference to giv- 
ing the job to a citizen of this State. We impugn not the motives 
of the agents of this matter; but it is a little humiliating that no 
work except the commonest labor, can be done in North Carolina; 
that everything which requires a little skill, capital, or ingenuity, 
must be sent North. In the case under consideration, we have heard 
it remarked, that when the whole bill of expenses connected with 
the printing of the Revised Statutes in Boston was footed up, it only 
amounted to a few thousand dollars more than the job would have 
cost in this State. But then we have the consolation of knowing 
that the book came from the JSTo?'th, and that it was printed among 
the abolitionists of Boston ; the peculiar friends of North Carolina 
and the South generally. Of course we ought to be willing to pay a 
few extra thousands in consideration of these important facts!" 

Southern divines give us elaborated Bible arguments ; 
Southern statists heap treatise upon treatise through which 
the Federal Constitution is tortured into all monstrous 
shapes ; Southern novelists bore us ad infinitum with pic- 
tures of the beatitudes of plantation life and the negro-quar- 
ters ; Southern verse-wrights drone out their drowsy dactyls 
or grow ventricious with their turgid heroics, all in defence of 
slavery — priest, politician, novelist, bardling, severally ring- 
ing the changes upon "the Biblical institution," "the conser- 
vative institution," " the humanizing institution," " the 
patriarchal institution" — and then — have their books printed 
on Northern paper, with Northern types, by Northern arti- 
sans, stitched, bound and made ready for the market by 

* Revised Code of North Carolina, published in 1855. by Little, Brown and 
Company, of Boston. 

18* 



418 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

Northern industry ; and yet fail to see in all this, as a true 
philosophical mind must see, an overwhelming refutation of 
their miserable sophisms in behalf of a system against which 
humanity in all its impulses and aspirations, and civilization 
in all its activities and triumphs, utter their perpetual pro- 
test. 

From a curious article in the " American Publishers' Circu- 
lar " on "Book Making in America," we give the following 
extracts: 

" It is somewhat alarming to know that the number of houses now 
actually engaged in the publishing of books, not including periodi- 
cals, amounts to more than three hundred. About three-fourths of 
these are engaged in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore 
— the balance being divided between Cincinnati, Buffalo, Auburn, 
Albany, Louisville, Chicago, St. Louis, and a few other places. 
There are more than three thousand booksellers who dispense the 
publications of these three hundred, besides six or seven thousand 
apothecaries, grocers, and hardware dealers, who connect literature 
with drugs, molasses and nails. 

" The best printing iu America is probably now done in Cam- 
bridge; the best cloth binding in Boston, and the best calf and 
morocco in New York and Philadelphia. In these two latter styles 
we are, as yet, a long distance from Heyday, the pride of London. 
His finish is supreme. There is nothing between it and perfection. 

"Books have multiplied to such an extent in our country, that 
it now takes 750 paper-mills, with 2,000 engines in constant opera- 
tion, to supply the printers, who work day and night, endeavoring 
to keep their engagements with publishers. These tireless mills pro- 
duced 270,000,000 pounds of paper the past year, which immense 
supply has sold for about $27,000,000. A pound and a quarter of 
rags were required for a pound of paper, and 400,000,000 pounds 
were therefore consumed in this way last year. The cost of manu- 
facturing a twelve months' supply of paper for the United States, 
aside from labor and rags, is computed at $4,000,000. . . . 

"The Harper establishment, the largest of our publishing houses, 



SOUTHERN LITEKATUXE. 419 

covers half an acre of ground. If old Mr. Caxton, who printed those 
stories of the Trojan war so long ago, could follow the Ex-Mayor of 
New York in one of his morning rounds in Franklin Square, he would 
he, to say the least, a little surprised. He would see in one room the 
floor loaded with the weight of 150 tons of presses. The electrotyping 
process would puzzle him somewhat ; the drying and pressing pro- 
cess would startle him ; the hustle would make his head ache; and 
the stock-room would quite finish him. An edition of Harpers' 
Monthly Magazine alone consists of 175,000. Few persons have any 
idea how large a numher this is as applied to the edition of a book. 
It is computed that if these magazines were to rain down, and one 
man should attempt to pick them up like chips, it would take him a 
fortnight to pick up the copies of one single number, supposing him 
to pick up one every second, and to work ten hours a day. 

" The rapidity with which books are now manufactured is almost 
incredible. A complete copy of one of Bulwer's novels, published 
across the water in three volumes, and reproduced here in one, was 
swept through the press in New York in fifty hours, and offered for 
sale smoking hot in the streets. The fabulous edifice proposed by a 
Yankee from Vermont, no longer seems an impossibility. ' Build the 
establishment according to my plan, 1 said he ; ' drive a sheep in at 
one end, and he shall immediately come out at the other, four quar- 
ters of lamb, a felt hat, a leather apron, and a quarto Bible.' " 

The business of the Messrs. Harper, whose establishment 
is referred to in the foregoing extract, is probably more gene- 
rally diffused over every section of this country than that of 
any other publishing house. From inquiries recently made 
of them we learn that they issue, on an average, 3,000 bound 
volumes per day, throughout the year, and that each volume 
will average 500 pages — making a total of about one million 
of volumes, and not less than five hundred millions of pages 
per annum. This does not include the Magazine and books 
in pamphlet form, each of which contains as much matter as 
a bound volume. Their bills for paper exceed $300,000 an 



420 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

nually, and as the average cost is fifteen cents per pound, they 
consume more than two millions of pounds — say one thousand 
tons of white paper. 

There are rSgularly employed in their own premises about 
550 persons, including printers, binders, engravers, and clerks. 
These are all paid in full once a fortnight in bankable money. 
Besides these, there are numerous authors and artists in every 
section of the country, who furnish manuscripts and illustra- 
tions, on terms generally satisfactory to all the parties inter- 
ested. 

The Magazine has a monthly circulation of between 175,- 
000 and 200,000, or about two millions of copies annually. 
Each number of the Magazine is closed up about the fifth of 
the month previous to its date. Five or six days thereafter 
the mailing begins, commencing with more distant sub- 
scribers, all of Avhom are supplied before any copies are sold 
for delivery in New York. The intention of the publishers 
is, that it shall be delivered as nearly as possible on the same 
day in St. Louis, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Bos- 
ton, and New York. It takes from ten to twelve days to 
dispatch the whole edition (which weighs between four and 
five tons) by mail and express. 

Their new periodical, "Harper's Weekly," has, in a little 
more than three years, reached a sale of fully 100,000 copies. 
The mailing of this commences on Monday night, and occu- 
pies about three days. 

Ex-Mayor Harper, whom we have found to be one of the 
most affable and estimable gentleman in the city of New York, 
informed us, some time ago, that, though he had no moans 
of knowing positively, he was of the opinion that about eighty 
per cent, of all-their publications find final purchasers in the 
Free States — the remainder, about twenty per cent., in the 
Slave States. Yet it is probable that, with one or two excep- 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 421 

tions, no other publishing house in the country has so large a 
per centage of Southern trade. 

Of the " more than three hundred houses engaged in the 
publication of books," to which the writer in the " American 
Publishers' Circular" refers, upward of nine-tenths of the 
number are in the non-slaveholding States, and these represent 
not less than ninety-nine hundredths of the whole capital 
invested in the business. Baltimore has twice as many pub- 
lishers as any other Southern city ; and nearly as many as the 
whole South beside. The census returns of 1850 give but 
twenty-four publishers for the entire South, and ten of these 
were in Maryland. The relative disproportion which then 
existed in this branch of enterprise, between the North and 
the South, still exists ; or, if it has been changed at all, that 
change is in favor of the North. So, of all the capital, enter- 
prise and industry involved in the manufacture of the mate- 
rial that enters into the composition of books. All the paper 
manufactories of the South do not produce enough to supply 
a single publishing house in the city of New York. Perhaps ''a 
Southern Literature" does not necessarily involve the several 
enterprises requisite to the manufacture of books ; but ex- 
perience has shown that there is a somewhat intimate relation 
between the author, printer, paper-maker and publisher ; in 
other words, that the intellectual activity which expresses 
itself in books, is measurable by the mechanical activities 
engaged in their manufacture. Thus, a State that is fruitful 
in authors, will almost necessarily be fruitful in publishers ; 
and the number of both classes will be proportioned to the 
reading population. The poverty of Southern literature is 
legitimately shoAvn, therefore, in the paucity of Southern pub- 
lishers. "We do not deny a high degree of cultivated talent 
to the South^ we are familiar with the names of her sons 
whose genius has made them eminent ; all that we insist upon 



422 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

is, that the same accursed influence which has smitten her 
industrial enterprises with paralysis, and retarded indefinitely 
her material advancement, has exerted a corresponding influ- 
ence upon her literature. How it has done this we shall more 
fully indicate before we close the chapter. 

At the Southern Slaveholders' Convention held afew years 
since at Savannah, a good deal was said about Southern litera- 
ture, and many suggestions made in reference to the best 
means for its promotion. One speaker thought that " they 
could get text books at home without going to either Old 
England or New England for them." Well, they can try. 
The effort will not harm them ; nor the North either. The 
orator was confident "that the South had talent enough to 
do anything that needs to be done, and independence enough 
to do it." The talent we shall not deny ; the independi nee 
we are ready to believe in when we see it. "When she throws 
off the incubus of slavery under which she goes staggering 
like the Sailor of Bagdad under the weight of the Old Man 
of the Sea, she will prove her independence, and demonstrate 
her ability "to do anything that needs to be done." Till then 
she is but a fettered giant, whose vitals are torn by the dogs 
which her, own folly has engendered. 

Another speaker, on the occasion referred to, half-uneon- 
sciously, it would seem, threw a gleam of light upon the sub- 
ject under discussion, which, had not himself and his hearers 
been bat-blind, would have revealed the clue that conducts 
from the darkness in which they burrow to the day of re- 
demption for the South. Said he : 

" Northern publishers employ the talent of the South and of the 
whole country to write for them, and ponr out thousands annually 
for it; but Southern men expect to get talent without paying for it. 
The ' Southern Quarterly Review ' and the ' Liteffery Messenger ' 
are literally struggling for existence, for want of material aid. . . . 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 423 

It is not the South that builds up Northern literature — they do it 
themsehes. There is talent and mind and poetic genius enough in 
the South to build up a literature of a high order; but Southern pub- 
lishers cannot get money enough to assist them in their enterprises, 
and, therefore, the South has no literature." 

Here are truths. " Southern men (slaveholders) expect to 
get talent without paying for it." A very natural expecta- 
tion, considering that they have been accustomed to have 
all their material wants supplied by the uncompensated toil 
of their slaves. In this instance it may seem an absurd one, 
but it results legitimately from the system of slavery. That 
system, in fact, operates in a two-fold way against the 
Southern publisher : first, by its practical repudiation of the 
scriptural axiom that the laborer is worthy of his hire ; and 
secondly, by restricting the circle of readers through the igno- 
rance which it inevitably engenders. How is it that the people 
of theXovth buildup their literature ? Two words reveal the 
secret : intelligence— compensation. They are a reading 
people — the poorest artisan or day-laborer has his shelf of 
books, or his daily or weekly paper, whose contents he sel- 
dom fails to master before retiring at night ; and they are 
accustomed to pay for all the boohs and papers which they 
peruse. Readers and payers— these are the men who insure 
the prosperity of publishers. Where a system of enforced 
servitude prevails, it is very apt to beget loose notions about 
the obligation of paying for anything ; and many minds fail 
to see the distinction, morally, between compelling Sambo to 
pick cotton without paying him wages, or compelling Lippin- 
cott & Co. to manufacture books for the planter's pleasure 
or edification upon the same liberal terms. But more than 
this — where a system of enforced servitude prevails, a fearful 
degree of ignorance prevails also, as its necessary accompa- 
niment. The enslaved masses are, of course, thrust back 



424 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

from the fountains of knowledge by the strong arm of law, 
while the poor non-slaveholding classes are almost as effec- 
tually excluded from the institutions of learning by their 
poverty — the sparse population of shareholding districts being 
unfavorable to the maintenance of free schools, and the exi- 
gencies of their condition forbidding them to avail themselves 
of any more costly educational privileges. 

Northern publishers can " employ the talent of the South 
and of the whole country to write for them, and pour out 
thousands annually for it," simply because a reading popula- 
tion, accustomed to pay for the service which it receives, 
enables them to do so. A similar population at the South 
would enable Southern publishers to do the same. Substi- 
tute free labor for slave labor, the institutions of freedom for 
those of slavery, and it would not long remain true that 
" Southern publishers cannot get money enough to assist 
them in their enterprises, and therefore the South has no 
literature." This is the discovery which the South Carolina 
orator from whom we quote, but narrowly escaped making, 
when he stood upon its very edge, and rounded his periods 
with the truths in whose unapprehended meanings was hidden 
this germ of redemption for a nation. 

The self-stultification of folly, however, was never more 
evident than it is in the current gabble of the oligarchs about 
a Southern literature. They do not mean by it a healthy, 
manly, normal utterance of unfettered minds, without winch 
there can be no proper literature ; but an emasculated substi- 
tute therefor, from which the element of freedom is elimi- 
nated ; husks, from which the kernel has escaped — a body, 
IVoiu which the vitalizing spirit has fled — a literature which 
ignores manhood by confounding it with brutehood ; or, at 
best, deals with all similes of freedom as treason against the 
"peculiar institution." There is not a single great name in 



SOUTHERN LITERATUKE. 425 

the literary annals of the old or new world that conld dwarf 
itself to the stature requisite to gain admission into the Pan- 
theon erected by these devotees of the Inane for their 
Lilliputian deities. Thank God, a Southern literature, in the 
sense intended by the champions of slavery, is a simple im- 
possibility, rendered such by that exility of mind which they 
demand in its producers as a prerequisite to admission into 
the guild of Southern authorship. The tenuous thoughts of 
such authorlings coidd not survive a single breath of manly 
criticism. The history of the rise, progress, and decline of 
their literature could be easily written on a child's smooth 
palm, and leave space enough for its funeral oration and 
epitaph. The latter might appropriately be that which, in 
one of our rural districts, marks the grave of a still-born 
infant : 

''If so early I am done for, 
I wonder what 1 was begun for!" 

We desire to see the South bear its just proportion in the 
literary activities and achievements of our common country. 
It has never yet done so, and it never will until its own man- 
hood is vindicated in the abolition of slavery. The impulse 
which such a measure would give to all industrial pursuits 
that deal with the elements of material prosperity, would be 
imparted also to the no less valuable but more intangible 
creations of the mind. Take from the intellect of the South 
the incubus which now oppresses it, and its rebound would 
be glorious ; the era of its diviner inspirations would begin ; 
and its triumphs would be a perpetual vindication of the 
superiority of free institutions over those of slavery. 

To diyckiuck's " Cyclopedia of American Literature " — a 
sort of Omnium-gatherum that reminds one of Jeremiah's 
fis:s — we are indebted for the following facts: The whole 



420 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

number of " American authors " whose place of nativity is 
given, is five hundred and sixty-nine. Of these seventy-nine 
were foreign born, eighty-seven were natives of the South, 
nud four hundred and three — a vast majority of the whole, 
first breathed the vital air in the free North. Many of those 
who were born in the South, received their education in the 
North, quite a number of whom became permanent residents 
thereof. Still, for the purjioses of this computation, we 
count them on the side of the South. Yet how significant 
the comparison which this computation furnishes ! Throwing 
the foreign born (adopted citizens, mostly residents of the 
North) out of the reckoning, and the record stands, — 
Northern authors four hundred and three ; Southern, eighty- 
seven — a difference of three hundred and sixteen in favor of 
the North ! And this, probably, indicates very fairly the 
relative intellectual activity of the two sections. 

We accept the facts gleaned from Duyckinck's work as a 
basis, simply, of our estimate : not as being absolutely ac- 
curate in themselves, though they are doubtless reliable in 
the main, and certainly as fair for the South as they are for 
the North. We might dissent from the judgment of the 
compiler in reference to the propriety of applying the term 
" literature " to much that his compilation contains ; but as 
tastes have proverbially differed from the days of the vene- 
rable dame who kissed her cow — not to extend our researches 
into the condition of things anterior to that interesting event 
— we will not insist upon our view of the matter, but take it 
for granted that he has disentombed from forgotten reviews, 
newspapers, pamphlets, and posters, a fair relative proportion 
of " authors " for both North and South, for which " Ame- 
rican Literature " is unquestionably under infinite obligations 
to him ! 

Griswold's " Poets and Poetry of America " and Thorcas 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 427 

Buchanan Read's " Female Poets of America " furnish evi- 
dence, equally conclusive, of the benumbing influence of 
slavery upon the intellect of a country. Of course, these 
compilers say nothing about slavery, and probably never 
thought of it in connection with their respective works, but 
none the less significant on that account is the testimony of 
the facts which they give. From the last edition of Gris- 
wold's compilation (which contains the names of none of our 
female writers, he having included them in a separate volume) 
we find the names of one hundred and forty-one writers of 
verse: of these one was foreign-born, seventeen natives of the 
slaveholdiug, and one hundred and twenty-three of the non- 
slavehokling States. Of our female poets, whose nativity is 
given by Mr. Read, eleven are natives of the South ; and 
seventy-three of the North ! These simple arithmetical figures 
are God's eternal Scripture against the folly and madness of 
Slavery, and need no aid of rhetoric to give emphasis to the 
startling eloquence of their revelations. 

But, after all, literature is not to be estimated by cubic 
feet or pounds averdupois, nor measured by the bushel or the 
yard-stick. Quality, rather than quantity, is the true standard 
of estimation. The fact, however, matters little for our 
present purpose ; for the South, we are sorry to say, is as 
much behind the North in the former as in the latter. We 
do not forget the names of Gayarre, Benton, Simms, and 
other eminent citizens of the Slave States, who have by their 
contributions to American letters conferred honor upon them- 
selves and upon our common country, when we affirm, that 
those among our authors who enjoy a cosmopolitan reputa- 
tion, are, with a few honorable exceptions, natives of the Free 
North ; and that the names which most brilliantly illustrate 
our literature, in its every department, are those which have 
grown into greatness under the nurturing influence of free 



428 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

institutions. " Comparisons are odious," it is said ; and 
we will not, unnecessarily, render them more so, in the 
present instance, by contrasting, name by name, the lite- 
rary men of the South and the literary men of the North. 
We do not depreciate the former, nor over-estimate the 
Litter. But, let us aslc, whence come our geographers, 
our astronomers, our chemists, our meteorologists, our 
ethnologists, and others, who have made their names illus- 
trious in the domain of the Natural Sciences ? Not from 
the Slave States certainly. In the Literature of Law, the 
South can furnish no name that can claim peership with those 
of Story and of Kent ; in History, none that tower up to the 
altitude of Bancroft, Prescott, Hildreth, Motley and Wash- 
ington Irving ; in Theology, none that can challenge favorable 
comparison with those of Edwards, Dwight, Channing, Bel- 
lows, Bushnell, Parker, and Wayland ; in Fiction, none that 
take rank with Cooper, and Mrs. Stowe ; and but few that 
may do so with even the second class novelists of the North ;* 
in Poetry, none that can command position with Bryant, 
Halleck, and Percival, with Whittier, Longfellow, and Lowell, 
with Willis, Stoddard and Taylor, with Holmes, Saxe, and 
Burleigh ; and — we might add twenty other Northern names 
before we found their Southern peer, with the exception of 
poor Poe, who, within a narrow range of subjects, showed 
himself a poet of consummate art, and occupies a sort of 
debatable ground between our first and second-class writers. 
We might extend this comparison to our writers in every 
department of letters, from the compiler of school-books to 
the author of the most profound ethical treatise, and with 

* We Southrons all glory in the literary reputation of Mr. Simms ; yet we 
must confess his inferiority to Cooper, and prejudice alone will refuse to admit 
that, while in the art of the novelist he is the superior of Mrs. Stowe, in geniua 
he must take position below her. 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 429 

precisely the same result. But we forbear. The task is dis- 
tasteful to our State pride, and would have been entirely 
avoided had not a higher principle urged us to its perform- 
ance. It remains for us now to inquire, 

What has produced this literary pauperism of the 
South? One single word, most pregnant in its terrible 
meanings, answers the question. That word is — Slavery ! 
But we have been so long accustomed to the ugly thing 
itself, and have become so familiar with its no less ugly fruits, 
that the common mind fails to apprehend the connection be- 
tween the one, as cause, and the other as effect ; and it there- 
fore becomes necessary to give a more detailed answer to our 
interrogatory. 

Obviously, then, the conditions requisite to a flourishing 
literature are wanting at the South. These are — 

I. Readers. The people of the South are not a reading- 
people. Many of the adult population never learned to read ; 
still more, do not care to read. We have been impressed, 
during a temporary sojourn in the North, with the difference 
between the middle and laboring classes in the Free States, 
and the same classes in the Slave States, in this respect. 
Passing along the great routes of travel in the former, or 
taking our seat in the comfortable cars that pass up and down 
the avenues of our great commercial metropolis, we have not 
failed to contrast the employment of our fellow-passengers 
with that which occupies the attention of the .corresponding 
classes on our various Southern routes of travel. In the one 
case, a large proportion of the passengers seem intent upon 
mastering the contents of the newspaper, or some recently 
published book. The merchant, the mechanic, the artisan, 
the professional man, and even the common laborer, going to 
or returning from their daily vocations, are busy with their 
morning or evening paper, or engaged in an intelligent dis- 



430 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

cussion of some topic of public interest. This is their leisure 
hour, and it is given to the acquisition of such information as 
may be of immediate or ultimate use, or to the cultivation of 
a taste for elegant literature. In the other case, newspapers 
and books seem generally ignored, and noisy discussions of 
village and State politics, the tobacco and cotton crops, fili- 
busterism in Cuba, Nicaragua, or Sonora, the price of negroes 
generally, and especially of " fine-looking wenches," the beau- 
ties of lynch-law, the delights of horse-racing, the excitement 
of street-fights with bowie-knives and revolvers, the " mani- 
fest destiny " theory that justifies the stealing of all territory 
contiguous to our own, and kindred topics, constitute the 
warp and woof of conversation. All this is on a level with 
the general intelligence of the Slave States. It is true, 
these States have their educated men — the majority of whom 
owe their literary culture to the colleges of the North. Not 
that there are no Southern colleges — for there are institutions, 
so called, in a majority of the Slave States. Some of them, 
too, are not deficient in the appointments requisite to our 
higher educational institutions ; but as a general thing, 
Southern colleges are colleges only in name, and will scarcely 
take rank with a third-rate Northern academy, while out- 
academies, with a few exceptions, are immeasurably inferior 
to the public schools of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. 
The truth is, there is a vast inert mass of stupidity and igno- 
rance, too dense for individual effort to enlighten or remove, 
in all communities cursed with the system of slavery. Dis- 
guise the unwelcome truth as we may, slavery is the parent 
of ignorance, and ignorance begets a whole brood of follies 
and of vices, and every one of these is inevitably hostile to 
literary culture. The masses, if they think of literature at 
all, think of it only as a costly luxury, to be monopolized by 
the few. 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 



431 



What follows, our readers will, we think, agree with us, is 
of great significance in this connection : 



TABLE 36. 



NUMBER OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS FRANKED BY UNITED STATES SENATORS*— 

1S58. 



FRKE STATE SENATORS. 



SLAVE STATE SENATORS. 



State. 



California . . 
Connecticut. 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Maine 

Mass 

Michigan 

N. Ilamp 

New Jersey . 
New York . . 

Ohio 

Penn 

Rhode Isl'd. 

Vermont 

Wisconsin . . 



Docu- 
ments. 



18,000 

19,000 

7,000 



315,000 I 
40,000 
11,000 
15,000 
4,000 
10,000 
14,000 I 
10,000 ) 

i,666 i 

49,000 

214,000 




Total. 



37,500 
7,000 
3S5,000 ! 
2G,000 
14,000 
24,000 

1,000 

I 
263,000 

65,000, 

8,000 

100,000 

6,000 

61,000 
2,800 
5,000 

10,000 



State. 



Total 1,019,800 



Alabama .. , 
Arkansas. .. 
Delaware . . . 
Florida. 

Georgia 

Kentucky. . . 
Louisiana. . , 
Maryland. . , 
Mississippi . . 

Missouri 

N. Carolina. 
S. Carolina . 
Tennessee... 

Texas 

Virginia 



Name. 



Docu- 
ments. 



Fitzpatrick 

Clay 

Sebastian 
Johnson . 
Bates. .. 
Bayard. . 
Mallory. . 

Yulee 

Iverson.. . 
Toombs.. 
Thompson, 
Crittenden 
Benjamin. 
Slidell . . . 
Pearce. . 
Kennedy. 

Brown 

Davis 

Green 

Polk 

Reid 

Clingman 

Evans 

I latum ond 

Bell 

Johnson. 

Houston 

Henderson 

Mason. 

Hunter 



1,500 I 

11,500 1 

2,000 I 

8,000 ( 



6,000 I 
2,000 I 
3,000 j 
2,000 ) 

ib',666 f 

11,000 i 
8,000 ( 
6,000 I 
5,000 j 

18,000 | 
6,000 I 

12,000 I 

15,000 ( 
1,000 I 

21,500 | 

i 

( 

7,000 I 

11,000 I 
5,000 I 



2.000 { 
2,000 ) 



13,000 
10,000 

8,000 
5,000 
10,000 
19,000 
11,000 
24,000 
27,000 
22,500 

1^,000 
•',000 
4,000 



Total 170,500 



Thus we perceive by the above table, that, Avhile thirty-two 
Free State senators send 1,019,800 documents — an average 



* See debate on the proposed amendment to the Post-office bill, to increase 
the rates of postage, in the United States Senate, February 24, 1859. Senators 
from the Slave States strongly, but unsuccessfully, advocated the passage 
of the amendment. Thanks to the Free State senators, who opposed and de- 
feated it ! 



432 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

of 31,869 each, thirty Slave State senators send only 1 1 6,500 
documents — an average of but 5,833 each, showing an ave- 
rage balance of 25,986 in favor of every Free State senator! 
Thus do the lazy pro-slavery officials of the South perpetuate 
the ignorance and degradation of their constituents, by with- 
holding from them — especially from their miserably-duped 
non-slaveholding constituents — the means of information to 
which they are justly entitled, and which they would re- 
ceive, if represented by men whose sense of duty and honor 
was not irremediably debased by social contact with slaves 
and slavery.* 

* We are aware that this is very plain language, but it is truthful also, and 
slaves and slaveholders are welcome to make the most of it. Objections have 
been frequently urged by certain gentlemen who criticised the first editions 
of the work in hand, because, as they say, we have uniformly treated our sub- 
ject with too great intensity of feeling — with too little calmness and forbear- 
ance — with too little charity for the unfortunate persons whom we have so un- 
l-emittedly belabored with our invectives and solemn protests. Granting to 
others the liberty of fully exercising their own opinions upon this and all other 
subjects, we claim that the same liberty should be conceded to us. We have 
performed our task in accordance with what seemed to devolve upon us as 
a duty. He who thinks that we have not done well, will please do better. 
With all of us there is always ample room for improvement, and it would, per- 
haps, hardly be safe to aver that there is, in all the world, anything whatever, 
animate or inanimate, entirely free from offensive features and imperfections. 
On the great question of the age, however, no man need go bookless because 
he does not approve the "Impending Crisis ;" for, besides numerous novels, 
which, with wonderful power, depict the evils of Slavery, there are before the 
public many matter-of-fact works, which demonstrate, in a clear and masterly 
manner, the unequalled blessings of Liberty. Of publications of the latter 
class, the following are a few of the most valuable : 

Weston's " Progress of Slavery." 

Goodloe's "Southern Platform." 

Spooneb's " Unconstitutionality of Slavery." 

Ames' " Legion of Liberty." 

Jay's " Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery," 

Cheever's "Scriptures (the) on the Guilt of Slavery." 

Goodell's " Slavery and Anti-Slavery." 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 



433 



The proportion of white adults over twenty years of age 
in each State, who cannot read and write, to the whole white 
population, is as follows : 



Connecticut, .. 

Vermont, 

N. Hampshire, . 
Massachusetts, . 

Maine, 

Michigan, 

Rhode Island, . 
New Jersey, . . . 

New York, 

Pennsylvania, . 

Ohio, 

Indiana, 

Illinois, . 



to every 568 

. 473 

810 

166 

108 

97 

67 

58 

56 

50 

43 

18 

17 



Louisiana, 1 to every 3S£ 

Maryland, 1 " 27 

Mississippi, 1 " 20 

Delaware, 1 " 18 

South Carolina, 1 " 17 

Missouri, 1 " 16 

Alabama, 1 " 15 

Kentucky, 1 " 13* 

Georgia, 1 " 13 

Virginia, 1 " 12£ 

Arkansas, 1 " 11£ 

Tennessee, 1 " 11 

North Carolina, 1 " 7 



In this table, Illinois and Indiana are the only Free States 
which, in point of education, are surpassed by any of the 
Slave States ; and this disgraceful fact is owing, principally, 
to the influx of foreigners, and to emigrants from the Slave 
States. New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania have 
also a large foreign element in their population, that swells 
very considerably this percentage of ignorance. For instance, 
New York shows, by the last census, a population of 98,722 
who cannot read and write, and of this number 68,052 are 
foreigners ; Rhode Island, 3,607, of whom 2,359 are foreign- 
ers ; Pennsylvania, 76,272, of whom 24,989 are foreigners. 
On the other hand, the ignorance of the Slave States is 
principally native ignorance, but comparatively few emigrants 
from Europe seeking a home upon soil cursed with human 
bondage. North Carolina has a foreign popidation of only 
340, South Carolina only 104, Arkansas only 27, Tennessee 
only 505, Virginia only 1,137 who cannot read and write ? 

Abbott's " South and Nofth." 

Chase and Sanbokn's " North and South." 

The last-mentioned work, especially, (by Henry Chase and C. H. Sanborn,) 
full, rich and manifold in statistical facts and arguments, and, withal, free 
from everything like taunt and menace, is deserving of a place in every house- 
hold at the altars of which have been kindled the fires of Freedom. 

19 



434 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

while the aggregate of native ignorance in these five States 
(exclusive of the slaves, who are debarred all education by 
law) is 278,948 ! No longer ago than 1837, Governor Clark, 
of Kentucky, in his message to the Legislature of that State, 
declared that, " by the computation of those most familiar 
with the subject, one-third of the adult population of the 
/State are tenable to write their names /" and Governor 
Campbell, of Virginia, reported to the Legislature, that " from 
the returns of ninety-eight clerks, it appeared that of 4,614 
applications for marriage licenses in 1837, no less than 1,047 
were made by men unable to write." 

In the Slave States the proportion of free whte children 
between the ages of five and twenty, who are found at any 
school or college, is not quite one-fifth of the whole ; in the 
Free States, the proportion is more than three-fifths. 

We could fill our pages with facts like these to an almost 
indefinite extent, but it cannot be necessary. No truth is 
more demonstrable, nay, no truth is more abundantly demon- 
strated, than this : that slavery is hostile to general educa- 
tion ; its strength, its very fife, is in the ignorance and sto- 
lidity of the masses ; it naturally and necessarily represses 
general literary culture. To talk, therefore, of the " creation 
of a purely Southern Literature," without readers to demand, 
or writers to produce it, is the mere babble of idiocy. 

II. Another thing essential to the creation of a literature is 
Mental Freedom. How much of that is to be found in the 
region of slavery ? We will not say that there is none; but 
if.it exists, it exists as the outlawed antagonist of human 
chattelhood. He who believes that the despotism of the ac- 
cursed system expends its malignant forces upon the slave, 
leaving intact the white and (so called) free population, is the 
victim of a most monstrous delusion. One end of the yoke 
that bows the African to the dust, presses heavily upon the 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 435 

neck of his Anglo-Saxon master. The entire mind of the 
South either stultifies itself into acquiescence with Slavery, 
succumbs to its authority, or chafes in indignant protest 
against its monstrous pretensions and outrageous usurpations. 
A free press is an institution almost unknown at the South. 
Free speech is considered as treason against Slavery ; and 
when people dare neither speak nor print their thoughts, free 
thought itself is well-nigh extinguished. All that can be said 
in defence of human bondage, may be spoken freely; but 
question either its morality or its policy, and the terrors of 
lynch-law are at once invoked to put down the pestilent 
heresy. The legislation of the Slave States for the suppres- 
sion of the freedom of speech and the press, is disgraceful 
and cowardly to the last degree, and can find its parallel only 
in the meanest and bloodiest despotisms of the Old World. 
No institution that could bear the light would thus sneakingly 
seek to burrow itself in utter darkness. Look, too, at the 
mobbings, lynchings, robberies, social and political .proscrip- 
tions, and all manner of nameless outrages, to which men in 
the South have been subjected, simply upon the suspicion that 
they were the enemies of Slavery. We could fill page after 
page of this volume with the record of such atrocities. But 
a simple reference to them is enough. Our countrymen have 
not yet forgotten why John C. Underwood was, but a short 
while since, banished from his home in Virginia, and the ac- 
complished Hedrick driven from his College professorship in 
North Carolina. They believed Slavery inimical to the best 
interest of the South, and for daring to give expression to 
this belief in moderate yet manly language, they were ostra- 
cised by the despotic Slave Power, and compelled to seek a 
refuge from its vengeance in States where the principles of 
freedom are better understood. Pending the last Presidential 
election, there were thousands, nay, tens of thousands of 



436 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

voters in the Slave States, who desired to give their suffrages 
for the Republican nominee, John C. Fremont, himself a 
Southron, but a non-slaveholder. The Constitution of the 
United States guaranteed to these men an expression of their 
preference at the ballot-box. But were they permitted such 
an expression ? Not at all. They were denounced, threat 
ened, overawed, by the Slave Power — and it is not too much 
to say that there was really no Constitutional election — that 
is, no such free expression of political preferences as the Con- 
stitution aims to secure — in a majority of the Slave States. 

From a multiplicity of facts like these, the inference is un- 
avoidable, that Slavery tolerates no freedom of the press — no 
freedom of speech — no freedom of opinion. To expect that a 
whole-souled, manly literature can flourish under such con- 
ditions, is as absurd as it would be to look for health amid 
the pestilential vapors of a dungeon, or for the continuance 
of animal life without the aid of oxygen. 

III. Mental activity — force — enterprise — are requisite to 
the crea'tion of literature. Slavery tends to sluggishness — 
imbecility — inertia. Where free thought is treason, the 
masses will not long take the trouble of thinking at all. 
Desuetude begets incompetence — the dare-not soon becomes 
the cannot. The mind thus enslaved, necessarily loses its 
interest in the processes of other minds ; and its tendency is 
to sink down into absolute stolidity or sottishness. Our 
remarks find melancholy confirmation in the abject servilism 
in which multitudes of the non-slaveholdmg whites of the 
South are involved. In them, ambition, pride, self-respect, 
hope, seem alike extinct. Their slaveholdiug fellows are, in 
some respects, in a still more unhappy condition — helpless, 
nerveless, ignorant, selfish ; yet vain-glorious, self-sufficient 
and brutal. Are these the chosen architects who are ex« 
pected to build up " a purely Southern literature ?" 



SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 437 

The truth is, slavery destroys, or vitiates, or pollutes, 
whatever it touches. No interest of society escapes the in- 
fluence of its clinging curse. It makes Southern religion a 
stench in the nostrils of Christendom — it makes Southern 
politics a libel upon all the principles of Republicanism — it 
makes Southern literature a travesty upon the honorable 
profession of letters. Thau the better class of Southern 
authors themselves, none will feel more keenly the truth of 
our remarks. They write books, but can find for them 
neither publishers nor remunerative sales at the South. The 
executors of Calhoun seek, for his works, a Northern pub- 
lisher. Benton writes history and prepares voluminous com- 
pilations, which are given to the world through a Northern 
publisher. Simms writes novels and poems, and they are 
scattered abroad from the presses of a Northern publisher. 
Eighty per cent, of all the copies sold are probably bought 
by Northern readers. 

When will Southern authors understand their own inter- 
ests ? When will the South, as a whole, abandoning its pre- 
sent suicidal policy, enter upon that career of prosperity, 
greatness, and true renown, to which God by his word and 
his providences, is calling it ? " If thou take away from the 
midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger and 
speaking vanity ; and if thou draw out thy soul to the hun- 
gry and satisfy the afflicted soul ; then shall thy light rise in 
obscurity and thy darkness be as the noonday : And the Lord 
shall guide thee continually and satisfy thy soul in drought, 
and make fat thy bones ; and thou shalt be like a watered 
garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. 
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste 
places ; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many genera- 
tions ; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, 
The restorer of paths to dwell in." 



438 SOUTHERN LITERATURE. 

Our limits, not our materials, are exhausted. We would 
gladly say more, but can only, in conclusion, add as the result 
of our investigations in this department of our subject, that 
Literature and Liberty are inseparable : the one can never 
have a vigorous existence without being wedded to the other. 



Our work is done. It is the voice of the 1ST on-slaveholding 
Whites of the South, through one identified with them by 
interest, by feeling, by position. That voice, by whomsoever 
spoken, must yet be heard and heeded. The time hastens — 
the doom of Slavery is written — the redemption of the South 
draws nigh. 

In taking leave of our readers, we know not how we can 
give more forcible expression to our thoughts and intentions 
than by saying that, in concert with the intelligent Free 
Voters of the North, we, the Non-slaveholding "Whites of 
the South, desire and expect to elevate to the Presidency, in 
1860, an able and worthy representative of the great princi- 
ples enunciated in the Republican platform adopted at Phila- 
delphia in 1856 ; and that, forever thereafter, we will, if we 
can, by our suffrages, hold the Presidential chair, and other 
high official positions in the Federal Government, sacredly 
intact from the occupancy and corruption of Pro-Slavery de- 
magogues, whether from the North or from the South ; and 
furthermore, that if, in any case, the Oligarchs do not quietly 
submit to the will of a constitutional majority of the peoj)le, 
as expressed at the ballot-box, the first battle between Free- 
dom and Slavery will be fought at home — and may God de- 
fend the Right ! 

THE END. 



N t »v . 3 I860. 



WRITINGS AID SPEECHES 



ALVAN STEVAET, 



SLAVERY. 



EDITED BY 

LUTHEE RAWS ON MARSH. 



NEW YORK : 
A. B. BURDICK, 145 NASSAU STREET. 

1860. 



AGENTS WANTED 



IN 



ALL PARTS OF THE COUNTRY 

To engage at once in the sale of our Books. We have 
just removed our Publishing House to the New Park 
Building (No. 145 Nassau Street), and are now pre- 
pared to fill all orders promptly. 

ACTIVE AGENTS 

CAN MAKE 

From $3b to $100 per month, net profits, 

in the sale of our Books. Even $200 per month have 
Been made by experienced Agents. 

We offer none but live books, and give liberal terms 



to Agents. 



we sell for cash only 



Send for our Descriptive Catalogue with terms to 
Agents. 

Address, A. B. BTJRDICK, Publisher, 

145 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 



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